I never thought that something as innocuous as writing a book review could cause such dissension. Yet, in these days of anonymous Internet posts, everything seems capable of causing controversy. I don't write reviews anymore. I once reviewed a movie that I didn't like and got down-voted by (I assume) fans of the flick. Seriously? The review stated exactly what my issues with it were. That's what a review should do because negatives for one viewer might be positives for another. Therefore, the review wasn't unhelpful, it just wasn't to their taste. Silly. Down-votes should be reserved for inanely-written blurbs that don't provide any useful information at all. The button does say, 'was this review helpful to you' not 'do you agree with the review'.
But I digress. I am really bothered by all of the contentious discussions out there regarding reviews. Yes, some authors have family and friends write glowing reviews for their book. So what? Do you honestly think that doesn't happen with traditionally published books? But none of that matters anyway because personally, my decision to read or not read a book isn't based on reviews and never has been.
How we did it in the 'Olden Days'
I'd like to say that I'm talking about something that occurred a long time ago in a galaxy far away, but I'm not. You see, in the not too distant past, few people had computers and Internet access. We found books to read the old-fashioned way - we went to the bookstore. We would start by going to the section of our interest: fiction, romance, fantasy, etc. This is actually one thing that bothers me about on-line bookstores because they should be better than the old book stores, but they're not. I put certain keywords in as a search, but rarely find that the results match the query. Usually the first few books do, but it quickly turns into what appears to be a list of books that match the overall genre without regard to the specific keywords. My personal feeling is that it has more to do with sales rank than my search criterion. I find that disappointing. Sometimes I want to find that off the beaten path book that just hasn't been discovered yet.
Anyway, back to the old book store. Once we made it to the section in which we wished to look, we scanned the shelves. I would usually go in alpha or reverse alpha-order. Since you usually only had a view of the spine, it was the title that gave you your first clue - or the author's name, but usually it was the title. You also had a nice analog view of the book's length. If I wasn't in the mood for an epic read, I'd avoid the fat ones, likewise if I was looking for something with more 'meat' in it so to speak, I'd skip the thin ones. Ah, there are days when I long to just browse an image of book spines, in alphabetic order, even when I'm searching for books for my e-reader.
Once you found something that caught your eye, you pulled the book out. Now you got to see the cover. Personally, cover art rarely influenced me one way or the other. After all, the handsome warrior and beautiful princess on the cover most times didn't even match the physical descriptions of the characters in the book. I either liked the cover or didn't, but the only time it influenced my decision was if say it depicted a time period about which I had little interest. For example, if the title hadn't indicated that the book was about World War II, but the cover art did and I didn't want to read about that, I would probably have re-shelved it.
At this point, I would turn the book over and read the description. This was the main deciding factor. If I liked the description, chances are I would buy the book, pending the outcome of the page and a half test. I say page and a half, because that is the minimum I would read before making a decision. If I couldn't get past that, it went back on the shelf. If I did, I'd usually read another couple of pages before deciding if I was interested and the author's style fit my taste.
And that was that. Decision made.
What's that? What about reviews? I didn't have any newspaper or magazine subscriptions, so I rarely read any book reviews. And here's the kicker. Can you guess what the only kind of reviews you would see about the book in the book store were? That's right - the good ones. Funny thing, publishers don't print crappy reviews on the cover or in the front matter of a book. What's even worse is that you would see something like "... the best in its class!" You know what the ellipsis stood for? The missing words. Why was it shortened? Because who would read the book if they saw that it said, "If horrible, gratuitous violence and unimaginative plots was a genre, this book would be the best in its class!" Yes, that's an exaggeration, but it was done. Does this sound familiar? Isn't it what people complain about with book reviews, especially on Amazon - that you see 'bogus' positive reviews?
I'm not saying you should ignore reviews. I like having access to them when I'm book shopping (although I confess that I prefer opinions found on GoodReads and book blogs to those on the on-line book seller sites), but my point is that the most important deciding factor back then is still available: read the first few pages of the book. The on-line booksellers offer that feature for exactly that reason. If you're basing your decision on whether to buy something on some anonymous person's review rather than the work itself, you're doing yourself a disservice. Nobody knows your taste better than you.
