These are my thoughts on various trends that have me rolling my eyes, raising my eyebrows and in general wondering about the state of book blogging. I’ve discussed readathons, giveaways, blog hops, rules and reasons to start blogging, followers, comments, and overdoing guest blogging. Now I tackle reviewing.
As a book blogger, reviews are our bread and butter. Our words are used by publishers and authors to create anticipation about pending and new releases or get an idea of what books are going to be big sellers. Authors use our words to adjust and improve their writing. Let’s face it – our reviews are what make us important (well, that and our love of books). They are what we do.
However, I continue to see reviews that are poorly written and/or fail to be objective in any way. Some bloggers hesitate to write anything negative, even going so far as to ignore those books left unfinished for various reasons. Even worse, there seems to be a new trend of looking for and focusing solely on the negative aspects of books. For every well-written blog, there are at least three or four poorly written ones. This, to me, is a disturbing trend.
You make be asking, “But Michelle, why do you care?” I care because I am proud of being a book blogger, and I take pride in my work. Call me old-fashioned, but I was raised to always give my best effort in everything. The adage “a job worth doing is a job worth doing well” is one of my unspoken and unconscious life mottoes. I treat my blog like my job, always striving to put forth my best work and constantly looking for areas of improvement. I take CPE credits to maintain my expertise in my chosen field in real life, and I continue to read and write to improve my writing skills here on the Interwebz. It is important for me to do this because for the vast majority of my readers, these words will be the only way by which you can get to know me. I want to be known as an erudite, well-spoken, thoughtful blogger because that is who I am in real life. Something can still be considered a hobby, which is what blogging is to me, but still invoke my professionalism.
For the vast majority of the bloggers out there, I do not get this same sense of professionalism and self-respect. So, what do I mean by unprofessionalism? I mean either extremely positive or extremely negative reviews. I mean criticizing a novel or an author so badly that it begins to take on the feel of a personal attack. I mean gushing about a book so badly that the thoughts are not coherent. I firmly believe there is no book that is 100 percent awesome or 100 percent awful. There is ALWAYS something which could use some improvement or something positive to be found within a novel’s pages. More importantly, no author sets out to write a bad book. When someone is overly critical about an author’s work, that is similar to someone coming up to you and criticizing your work. The mere fact that an author is able to get a novel published is worthy of our respect, and our reviews should reflect that respect. It is okay to point out why you did not like something, but to let the discussion spiral into a rant against the author’s ability to write is completely inappropriate.
This is not to say that no one should ever write a negative review. There is a way to write them in such a way that anyone reading it can understand why you did not like a book, but that it is your own biases impacting your opinion and in no way is the fault of the author. The same can be applied to books not finished. I don’t feel that a blogger should ignore them. There is obviously a reason why you didn’t want to continue reading them, and there is a way to let your audience know these reasons without it becoming trash talk against the book or against the author. I try to do this with every review. I will admit that with some reviews, I am less successful at being overly harsh than I would like, but I always try to keep the feelings of the author in mind when writing up my thoughts.
If we want to continue being an important part of the book world, there needs to be room for both positive and negative reviews on a blog. We owe it to our readers, to authors, and to publishers to be honest and open about what we read and why. We should not be afraid to share our opinions in a respectful manner. More importantly, we should continue to consider ourselves professionals and act as such. I confess, when I was purging my feed reader earlier this year, it was actually quite easy for me to discern which blogs needed to go by their poor writing and extreme reviews. I would love to see the day where to purge a feed reader is pure agony because then I feel we are doing our jobs as bloggers. My fear is that as the book blogging world continues to grow, it is going to be more and more difficult separating the wheat from the chaff for everyone, and the power of book bloggers will diminish as publishers and authors struggle to find the gems hidden among all the rubble. This does the entire community a disservice.
I’m curious what you think about this. Am I a blog snob, or do I have a legitimate concern here? Have you been seeing something similar in your feeds? What are your own approaches to reviews?
Amen!!
Between your post and the comments above, there is certainly a lot of food for thought.
Girl I just wrote a gargantuan comment and now it's lost 🙁 I knew I should have copied first!
Basically lets keep striving to be professional and hopefully everyone else will follow.
I am of the opinion that there is no such thing as a bad book, which is why I can finish a book even though I may not enjoy reading it 100 percent of the time. This is also why I feel so strongly about overly harsh negative reviews.
As for giving authors respect, I feel the fact that they put themselves out there like that, put forth the effort to write and get their book out there in to the public, is more than most people will ever do when it comes to living their dreams. Are some more talented and deserving of that respect than others? Of course, but at least they took a chance and did something they always wanted to do. They have more courage than I do, not that I am interested in writing a novel of any kind.
My point was about professionalism and being well-written if we truly want to change the field of publishing. We have already, to some extent, but I think we can do more collectively, as long as we continue to improve.
Exactly! I know that I did not like Sarah Pekkanen's first novel. There was something about it that just did not sit well with me. However, I *adored* her second novel. Because I was rather gentle in my review of the first one, I feel better about gushing about her second one and getting all fan-girly when she talks to me on Twitter. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had been overly cruel or negative during my first review. This, to me, is why it is so important to find balance. You never know who you are going to meet and when.
Criticism has been given such a negative connotation lately; I can't figure out why that is since positive criticism is also very beneficial, and not just when writing reviews. Balance is definitely key.
Thanks, Jenners! You put it much more succinctly than I did. I do think there should be a difference between those who review books that were given to you for free versus those that are reviewing books from their shelves and for which they paid money. The free books deserve more careful analysis and critiques because that is what is going to best benefit the author and the publisher.
I do look for balance in reviews by a blogger. If they like EVERYTHING, I begin to question their tastes. And you can tell the difference between someone who takes their time and thinks about a review and someone who seems to just slap it together. I do think that you may love book but not be a good writer yourself — even to write a book review. For most poeple, I think blogging is a "fun hobby" that they don't take too seriously. But when you are reviewing books that you get for free, I think you owe a decent and honest review. Well said.
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Thanks, Marie! You summarized my thoughts nicely. I do feel that overly positive reviews do sound suspiciously disingenuine because there is no perfect book. Similarly, overly negative reviews are just plain mean because they do not take into consideration the reader's own biases and background nor do they consider the author's feelings. We need to be willing to say the good and the bad in a tactful manner if we hope to continue to be taken seriously, IMO.
Thanks, Amber! Constructive literary criticism can be difficult, but I can't imagine writing any other type of review. To me, they are easier than gushing or ranting about a book. Maybe that's just me though. LOL!
No biggie! I have it automatically set up to link to your most recent blog post so that I can visit visitors unless you opt out of CommentLuv
While I personally prefer well-written reviews to those that sound like they are written by an infatuated teenager, I do recognize that part of the appeal of blog reviews is that they are written by a non-professional. Still, in a very roundabout way, I was likening professionalism to respect. No matter what words are used to describe a book or one's opinion about a book, respect is essential if a blogger wants to be taken seriously.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for your opinions! I love hearing what others think about such things!!
I don't know why my last blog post showed up there. Sorry. Didn't mean for blatant self-promotion to occur. 🙂
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Your post was right in line with much of the conversation at the KidLitCon blogger conference. There's a recap of posts at http://www.kidlitosphere.org/news/. Like you, I read book bloggers who strive for constructive literary criticism. It's a ton of work to write that kind of review, but for writers like me who are always trying to improve craft, those reviews are invaluable. Thanks for what you do!
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Thank you for this. I was just having a convo about this w my friend, especially about the bashing reviews. It makes my heart hurt when I read some of the horrible things people say about books, and even their authors. There is a trend in the world today that being snarky is a positive trait. While being snarky can be fun (and makes for a fun character!), respect and kindness has to come first.
Although, I do think the amount of "professionalism" is really determined by the blog's purpose and audience. I think one of the reasons blogs became so popular is because there really isn't pressure to write a professional-sounding review. And a lot of people respond to that, both bloggers and readers.
But professionalism is more about respect than anything. And bloggers DO need to take care. And really, when someone writes a bashing review, the only thing they accomplish is making themselves look stupid.
Anyway, thanks for letting me get in my 2 cents! (Love the name of your blog, too!)
Amy
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