In my past two entries, I’ve ranted about author shenanigans in response to online reviews by readers. There are writers who create accounts under assumed names, aka “sockpuppets,” in order to praise or defend their own books. They go on Twitter and encourage their friends, relatives and fans to vote down negative reviews and vote up positive ones, or to join a dogpile to criticize a negative review or attack the reviewer.This week, I turn to thoughts on amateur book reviews.
Once we've bought or borrowed a book, spent time reading it, succeeding or failing to relate to it, we feel a certain ownership. For this reason, I believe that readers have every right to call an author out for not doing research for a historical novel or for one set on the other side of the world. A writer giving a novel a present-day setting has no excuse for not checking an atlas or Google Earth to verify whether Istanbul is located in the middle of a desert or not. A writer who presumes to write about an ethnicity or culture about which they know very little deserves any criticism she gets for not accurately portraying those people, their culture, their history or folklore. I personally consider it disrespectful and arrogant to co-opt a culture without their knowledge and consent. A writer writing historical fiction has to remember that he is placing fictional characters in an historical setting and treat that setting with appropriate respect. This includes anything steampunk, science fiction, or presented as alternate history. Whatever your alterations, we readers can tell if you know your stuff or not.
If you, as a reader, belong to a community such as Goodreads or Shelfari or any of the other sites out there, if you blog about books or comment on others’ blogs about books, make sure your objections to a book are not entirely based on emotion. I have seen out-of-had dismissals of an entire novel because a reader cited “bad parts” in it. “Bad” is not only polarizing, it is also imprecise. Assertions like this are opinions, not facts. If you are sensitive about content, try to find out if there are such scenes in the book before you read it. Be aware of age-specificity when choosing books for younger readers. I admit some language or sex scenes may be gratuitous. Look critically at those scenes and that language. And regardless, try to be objective about the rest of the story. Was it an interesting story idea? Were the characters people you cared about, and were you able to occasionally separate them from the actions or words you found objectionable? If the book is still "ruined" for you, then so be it. But don't judge readers or vilify writers who don't possess the same sensibilities you do.
“I wanted [blahblah] to happen.” In other words: “I wanted the book to go the way I wanted it to go.” I can see disagreement with an obvious red herring, or irritation with an author who knows no other way to advance a plot than to make a character do something stupid or out of character. I can understand irritation with a character who is shallow or clueless, but as long as it isn’t deus ex machina by a lazy writer, my answer to these reviewers is: Please consider whether or not the theme or conflicts were better supported by the author’s decision than by your wishes for the story. How realistic are your expectations? How relevant or logical are they to the story’s final outcome? Consider whether the theme or conflicts were better supported by the author’s decision than by your hopes for the story. Write a fanfiction with the ending you wanted to see, and give credit to the original for your ideas. Then get over it. While I don’t agree with everything Jim Thompson says about reviewing books, he makes some good points here.
“I just couldn’t get into it.” Okay, then. Admit it’s you and not necessarily the book. Recognize that not every book is going to engage every reader. Sometimes worldviews (either of reader or author) get in the way. A reader who thinks Tally Youngblood from Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series is shallow may not be considering the society in which Tally has been raised--a dystopic world where young people are forced to have plastic surgery so that they conform to a very narrow, standardized beauty. Until that surgery, one is openly referred to as an "ugly." After consideration of the context of the story or the author's purpose, if you still aren’t engaged with a book, then abandon it. Life’s too short. But don’t blame the book or author for something you personally “just couldn’t get into.” It's like a relationship that doesn't work out. Sometimes it's you, sometimes your partner, sometimes both. So end the relationship and find new love elsewhere.
A review, on the other hand, that gives specific reasons for disliking a book: “Shallow characters and uneven pacing, writing that tells and doesn’t show” and is then willing to back up those claims (such as Wendy’s review here) will carry far more weight than THIS BOOK SUCKED!!!!!!!!! or THIS BOOK WAS SOOOOOOOO AWESOME!!!!!!!! Besides, I’m old-school interwebs where capslock used to be equivalent to shouting. And, as an English teacher, don’t get me started on the imprecise language or all those exclamation marks.
Once we've bought or borrowed a book, spent time reading it, succeeding or failing to relate to it, we feel a certain ownership. For this reason, I believe that readers have every right to call an author out for not doing research for a historical novel or for one set on the other side of the world. A writer giving a novel a present-day setting has no excuse for not checking an atlas or Google Earth to verify whether Istanbul is located in the middle of a desert or not. A writer who presumes to write about an ethnicity or culture about which they know very little deserves any criticism she gets for not accurately portraying those people, their culture, their history or folklore. I personally consider it disrespectful and arrogant to co-opt a culture without their knowledge and consent. A writer writing historical fiction has to remember that he is placing fictional characters in an historical setting and treat that setting with appropriate respect. This includes anything steampunk, science fiction, or presented as alternate history. Whatever your alterations, we readers can tell if you know your stuff or not.
If you, as a reader, belong to a community such as Goodreads or Shelfari or any of the other sites out there, if you blog about books or comment on others’ blogs about books, make sure your objections to a book are not entirely based on emotion. I have seen out-of-had dismissals of an entire novel because a reader cited “bad parts” in it. “Bad” is not only polarizing, it is also imprecise. Assertions like this are opinions, not facts. If you are sensitive about content, try to find out if there are such scenes in the book before you read it. Be aware of age-specificity when choosing books for younger readers. I admit some language or sex scenes may be gratuitous. Look critically at those scenes and that language. And regardless, try to be objective about the rest of the story. Was it an interesting story idea? Were the characters people you cared about, and were you able to occasionally separate them from the actions or words you found objectionable? If the book is still "ruined" for you, then so be it. But don't judge readers or vilify writers who don't possess the same sensibilities you do.
“I wanted [blahblah] to happen.” In other words: “I wanted the book to go the way I wanted it to go.” I can see disagreement with an obvious red herring, or irritation with an author who knows no other way to advance a plot than to make a character do something stupid or out of character. I can understand irritation with a character who is shallow or clueless, but as long as it isn’t deus ex machina by a lazy writer, my answer to these reviewers is: Please consider whether or not the theme or conflicts were better supported by the author’s decision than by your wishes for the story. How realistic are your expectations? How relevant or logical are they to the story’s final outcome? Consider whether the theme or conflicts were better supported by the author’s decision than by your hopes for the story. Write a fanfiction with the ending you wanted to see, and give credit to the original for your ideas. Then get over it. While I don’t agree with everything Jim Thompson says about reviewing books, he makes some good points here.
“I just couldn’t get into it.” Okay, then. Admit it’s you and not necessarily the book. Recognize that not every book is going to engage every reader. Sometimes worldviews (either of reader or author) get in the way. A reader who thinks Tally Youngblood from Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies series is shallow may not be considering the society in which Tally has been raised--a dystopic world where young people are forced to have plastic surgery so that they conform to a very narrow, standardized beauty. Until that surgery, one is openly referred to as an "ugly." After consideration of the context of the story or the author's purpose, if you still aren’t engaged with a book, then abandon it. Life’s too short. But don’t blame the book or author for something you personally “just couldn’t get into.” It's like a relationship that doesn't work out. Sometimes it's you, sometimes your partner, sometimes both. So end the relationship and find new love elsewhere.
A review, on the other hand, that gives specific reasons for disliking a book: “Shallow characters and uneven pacing, writing that tells and doesn’t show” and is then willing to back up those claims (such as Wendy’s review here) will carry far more weight than THIS BOOK SUCKED!!!!!!!!! or THIS BOOK WAS SOOOOOOOO AWESOME!!!!!!!! Besides, I’m old-school interwebs where capslock used to be equivalent to shouting. And, as an English teacher, don’t get me started on the imprecise language or all those exclamation marks.
Finally, consider genre when reviewing a book. A mystery/thriller or a novel set in a war zone is going to have strong language and violent situations. If you are a romance fan, literary fiction is going to jar you a bit. Expanding one's horizons can be painful at first.
The World Wide Web is a big, messy place. People will have opinions you disagree with and sometimes they have facts you'd rather ignore. Learn to distinguish between the two--and, whether reader, writer or both--move on.
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