Tagged: book reviewing
Discussion: Befriending Authors
We in the blogging community often work quite a bit more closely with authors than, say, a reviewer for a national newspaper or bigger book reviewing website. One of the consequences of that is we develop pretty good working relationships with authors and sometimes those develop into friendships (insomuch as one can be friends with someone purely online). But that also brings up a big ethical question: How do these relationships affect our reviews? Should book reviewers befriend authors and review their books?
No review is completely objective, obviously. Your own experiences and likes and dislikes go into your perception of a book and the writing of the review. But being friends with an author can make writing a review a little harder so should bloggers either a) not befriend authors at all or b) not review books by their friends.
Personally I consider myself friends with some of the authors I’ve reviewed here on my blog and I still reviewed their books anyway. (This is a limited number because while I’m friends with about 5 authors most of my relationships with authors would be considered ‘professionally friendly’.) But when I write a review I totally block out any perceptions of the author as best I can. If my friend writes crappy dialogue, I’m going to tell her in the review. If the characters seem one dimensional and have very few realistic motivations then I’m going to call him out on it. Sometimes it’s hard; I’m certainly not going to claim that it’s not. However, I feel that I am generally objective enough not to let my friendships as they stand interfere in my criticism. If at some point in the future I did feel like I couldn’t objectively review a book by a friend, then I simply would not review the book.
What I want to know now is this: As a blogger do you feel it’s right to make friends with authors at all? If you are friends with an author, do you feel it affects your ability to give them an objective review? How do you balance your friendships with your reviewing principles of honesty and openness?
The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge
Yes, it is very narcissistic to name a reading challenge after myself, but frankly all the good names were taken and I’m not one to plagiarize. So what’s my challenge for myself and for anyone who wants to participate? Well, here it is:
The Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge is to read and review (either on Goodreads, Amazon or your own blog) 104 books in one year starting January 1, 2013 and ending December 31, 2013.
Yes, this is an insane amount of books and I know that not many people may be able to achieve it. That’s why there are different levels you can strive for:
1. Mad Reviewer: 104 books in one year. (2 books a week all year.)
2. Crazy Reviewer: 52 books in one year. (1 book a week all year.)
3. Slightly Sane Reviewer: 26 books in one year. (1 book every fortnight all year.)
4. Sane Reviewer: 12 books in one year. (1 book every month all year.)
Got that? So, of course, there are some rules to go along with it:
1. Self-published, independently published and traditionally published books are all completely acceptable. You can even read them on an e-reader.
2. No audiobooks. The point is to read books, not have someone reading to you.
3. I don’t have a sign-up form like many reading challenges, but if you have a blog you can copy and paste the code below into a text widget:
Goal: 104 books read and reviewed<br>
Current: 0<br>
<div style=”height:15px;background:#A9D0F5;border:solid;”>
<div style=”background:#3366FF;color:white;width:0;”><b>0</b>
</div>
</div>
(A huge thanks goes to Stacking Pennies for the initial format of the progress bar.)
This is the one I used, but you can of course modify it to fit your goal. Don’t have a blog? Don’t worry. Just keep track of all the books you read somewhere and comment on my year-end post on December 31. I’m trusting you guys to stay honest, but if I need to I’ll check out whether you actually posted reviews.
4. Everyone who achieves their goal will be entered into a draw for a grand prize, provided by me. What that prize is I’m not sure yet, but it will obviously be book related. If you have any suggestions for a possible prize, please let me know!
5. You can review your books on any site. Your own blog, Goodreads, someone else’s blog, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. The point is just to review the books you read!
So who wants to sign up? Just post your intentions in the comments below and what level you want to aim for. Personally, I’m going to go for ‘Mad Reviewer’ because I really should earn my name.
It would also be great if you could publicize this in any way possible because I want as many people in my draw as possible. Obviously being Freshly Pressed would be too much to hope for, but I can still dream, can’t I?
My Rating System
On October 13, not only will it be my birthday, but it will also mark my nine month book reviewing milestone. 9 months is a lot of time to be posting reviews almost daily, but in that entire time I’ve never once explained my rating system. I had assumed that from my reviews people would gather what I meant. But then I realized that things that seem obvious to me are rarely obvious to anyone else. Therefore, I am finally going to explain my rating system.
5/5 stars: Excellent! Three dimensional characters that actually kept my interest throughout the novel, a plot that was interesting (not necessarily fast-paced) and in fantasy, believable world-building…all these are hallmarks of 5 star books. Even though I try not to be influenced by the ending, I still am. If the ending is tragic but makes sense in the context of the story, I’m fine with that. But if you’re writing a story that follows the plot of your typical opera then suddenly has a perfectly happy ending, I’m not going to be pleased.
4/5 stars: Good! There are likely excellent characters and a good plot, but the world-building may have been off or the writing style wasn’t descriptive enough or was too descriptive. Usually I describe 4 star books as good, but not great. They lack that sense of oomph! you get from the truly great novels.
3/5 stars: Meh. 3 star books are the hardest to review because you have to strike a good balance between the good and bad elements. In ‘meh’ books the characters are usually uninteresting but the plot is decent because the author pays more attention to the plot than the characters. Sometimes there’s poor writing, but there usually isn’t.
2/5 stars: Ugh. This is a ‘Why did I waste precious hours of my life reading this?’ book. 2 star books usually have vapid, stereotypical characters, boring or confusing plots and poor writing. They’re not so bad as to merit actual hatred from me, but rather disappointment. Usually they’re books with a lot of potential, but they don’t deliver.
1/5 stars: Terrible! This is reserved for books with all of the characteristics I listed in my 2 star category, but they tend to go the extra mile. By that, I mean the premise stunk, the delivery was poor, the characters were vapid and the plot made me doing time calculations by page 5. These are the truly bad books, the ones with no hope of redemption. So why don’t I give them 0/5 stars? Well, obviously the writer put in some effort to publish a novel, right? Some editor must have liked it. In self-publishing, it usually just means the author was using writing as a means of wish fulfillment.
0.5/5 stars: One of the worst books I’ve ever read! This is the lowest rating I’ve ever given out. It means that I felt something other than disappointment in the novel: it means I truly hated it. I’m not a person that has very strong emotions in general, so when a novel receives 0.5 stars, you know I truly, truly hated it. Books like these are a waste of paper and precious hours of life. They should never have made it past the slush pile or the author should never have had the determination to go the self-publishing route.
Does that clarify things a bit? For my fellow reviewers, what are your rating systems like? What’s the lowest rating you’ve ever given?
The True Confessions of a Book Reviewer
I’m approaching my ninth month as a book reviewer, even though it doesn’t feel like it and I’ve been reflecting a lot on my blog and book reviewing in general. It wasn’t until I saw this article on The Perpetual Page-Turner that I realized a lot of other reviewers experience the same things. Well, here are my confessions:
1. There are times when I don’t want to get out of bed, let alone write a review.
I love writing reviews and when I really love a book, writing a review is easy. However, when there are mixed elements in a book it’s hard to write a review. You have to balance out the good and the bad and say why certain aspects were bad. Writing-wise, it’s much more difficult than to gush, but it needs to be done. I owe it to my readers and the author to write a fair review, but that doesn’t make it any easier to write when I have writer’s block. There are some days when I don’t even want to get out of bed to go to work and make money, let alone write a review for fun.
I go through the occasional period of writing trouble and feel under-appreciated; I’m not ashamed to admit that. But then I get that one comment that makes my day and gives me new motivation to write through the good and bad times. It’s comments that expand upon the article, promote discussion and show that someone appreciates what I’m doing that give me the motivation to keep writing every day. To some it may seem pathetic, but it’s that occasional thoughtful comment that makes my day, especially when I’ve had a long day at work. Continue reading
The Surprising Benefits of Book Reviewing
A muse descended on my shoulder and I couldn’t stop typing, so guess what? I posted over at We Heart Reading, which has recently received a lovely new make-over. Go on and check out The Surprising Benefits of Book Reviewing, in which I reflect on posting one review per day for nearly 6 months.