Week #5 Prompt: My Review of Reviews

This week we are taking a look at book reviews. I just wrote my first “Kirkus Style Review” and if you think that writing reviews is easy, you would be wrong!! It’s hard to stay objective if it’s a genre you’re not crazy about. It’s difficult to summarize the book without giving too much away. And how many times do I have to read through it before I finally catch the last missing comma, the final misspelled word, and the accidental swap out of one character’s name for the other? Easy? No. Fun? Well…it wasn’t NOT fun. I’d try it again.

For class, we were to look at some reviews (provided to us) and give feedback.

The first set of reviews was for the eBook (and eBook only) “The Billionaire’s First Christmas” by Holly Rayner.  One was a customer review from Amazon and the other was a review from someone’s blog. The questions asked were, “Do you feel they are both reliable? How likely would you be to buy this book for your library?”

Here is an excerpt from the blog review:

My answer:  I do not find either review to be reliable. I know I just said that reviews aren't easy, but I couldn’t even get the gist of the reviewer’s opinions because I could not read past the lack of/misuse of punctuation and the abuse of grammar. I tried to give a little leeway to the review above because I’m guessing (hoping?) that the reviewer is still learning to speak English. Based on these reviews, the only way I would add the eBook to my library would be if a patron requested it (and it was fairly new – not older than 1 year), or if it was a very popular author trying one of those “eBook only” deals, which drives me crazy because then every elderly lady who reads every romance novel by that popular romance novelist is going to be disappointed when I tell her that she will need a computer, mobile phone or Kindle if she wants to read the latest. She will then ask if I can get it from another library <sigh>. It happens. It’s frustrating. It’s library life.

The second set of reviews was for the book “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt. The reviews were from professional review sources, “Kirkus Reviews,” “Booklist,” “Library Journal” and another that I can’t see at the moment because my cat is asleep on the paper. The “Kirkus” Review was the most thorough and the most professional. The others seemed to let opinions sneak in a little more, or seemed to miss the point (the School Library Journal Review focuses on the passing down of stories rather than the poverty.) One review says that 4 siblings died, while the rest say only three did. Still, based on reading them as a whole, I would likely purchase this book for my library (although I know we already have it.) It has a Kirkus starred review, and that generally is a “must add.”

Do I think it’s fair that some books get full coverage in reviews and others don’t? No, but I don’t know what to do about it other than try to read as many reviews that are “off the grid” as I can, in addition to reading as many non-reviewed books as possible. Obviously the non-reviewed or lesser-reviewed books don’t make it into library collections as often as mainstream, reviewed books do, but we also have to realize that patrons have a say on what we purchase. Yes, most of them are bringing their lists in from the “New York Times,” but there are also those avid readers out there who know how to find books in the nooks and crannies of the Web or in the backs of books they just read or through their book groups. I’ve had more than one patron request a new book not available on Baker & Taylor or Ingram. In these situations, we may resort to Amazon, but if it’s a new book and a patron has requested it, chances are, we will purchase it – reviewed or not.

If a review source will not print negative reviews, I would have to question what we’re missing out on because their reviewers didn’t like it. I mean, do they print positive reviews even if they didn’t like the book, or do they just leave the review of the book out all together? This is why we must use multiple review sources – and even then, we have to realize that each time, we are trusting one person’s opinion of a book – professional book reviewer or not.

In my library, I’m the selector for the Dewey 000’s and 100’s  - not the most glamorous and not the most circulating collections in the library. I do, however, use review journals to help me select new books. Since our library subscribes to Kirkus and Library Journal, those are the reviews I use the most. I do occasionally read the fiction reviews in these sources, too, for my own personal reading.