Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Week Five Prompt

I do not think both of the reviews for the Romance were reliable. The Amazon review was written well but it isn't written by a teacher or librarian... just a customer - so I don't know how much weight to give it. At least it is written OK. The second review was not reliable at all because the writing is so bad and unprofessional that I didn't take anything in it seriously. How can you trust someone's judgment about writing when they can't write. I think I would still buy it for the collection though because the first review on Amazon made it sound like something that we get requests for here: a clean romance. I do not see from the reviews how this is romance suspense - it even says contemporary romance on the review.

I have never read Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. I am sure it might be a great book, but the reviews did not make me feel thrilled about adding it to the collection. In my opinion, they focused on and described aspects of the book that did not "sell it" for me. The writers of the reviews pulled out unappealing parts of the book and what I think they may have been aiming for was to show how he rose above and still has humor and a hopeful spirit after such hard times and painful experiences. The magic of that though is probably in McCourt's writing and this aspect did not translate well in the reviewers' writing. Instead of writing in detail about the awful things that happened, they should have made that generic and fussed more about how uplifting and inspirational his story is. The last review was OK I guess, but still the reviews just didn't make the book sound as wonderful as they then said it was. So, I think the details of events should have been toned way down. The reviews just did not make me feel thrilled about adding it to the collection.

I do not think it's fair that one type of book is reviewed to death and other types of books get little to no coverage. Reviews may be all some collection developers see. So, if the book's not reviewed, it will be missed. This affects the library's collection because the collection will be biased and some really great unreviewed stuff will be missed and not even given a chance. I am not sure how I feel about review sources that won't print negative content. I guess they should but in taste and with respect. They should not write such a review that aims to take the author out and ruin their reputation completely, but if it is an intelligent critique done with respect, I suppose that is good. People reading reviews need to realize anyways that this is just one person's opinion. Sometimes a negative review may entice people to read it too. I used to read reviews and sometimes there would be one that said at the end that the reviewer would pass on adding it to the collection in favor of another title which they found to be better written about the same subject. I do not buy for the collection right now, but I used to. Many years ago we got to see a copy of a lot of the books that we had to choose from. This was fantastic, but then it went to just reviews. So, I read the review on every single book once a month to make my decision - that was a lot of reading! I enjoyed reading the reviews but I didn't put one hundred percent faith in them. There were many times I read a raving review and then when the book came in I thought, "I don't know one child who would actually like this book." So, sometimes they can be off. I do enjoy reading reviews though and still do sometimes even though I'm not buying. I read the School Library Journal and Booklist when I can. Because of this class, I will expand my horizons.

4 comments:

  1. I’ve always been skeptical when it comes to reviews because I’m not entirely sure if I can trust another reader’s interpretation of a book. It doesn’t seem to be very appropriate to judge the quality of a book by someone else’s opinion, especially when the review is not favorable, because I’m not sure the basis of that kind of review. I wouldn’t want that review to affect my perception of a certain book because that could have the potential of impacting the library’s collection negatively. Patrons should have access to the books that will meet the genres needs, and I believe that we should take reviews, especially negative ones, with a grain of salt when it comes to adding new material to the library’s collection.

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  2. "How can you trust someone's judgment about writing when they can't write?"- This is exactly what I was trying to express in my post.

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  3. Hi Jodi,

    During my internship I can remember the Collection Development Librarian receiving advanced reader copies of novels a few months prior to their actual publishing/release date. There is something about holding the book and your hand and being able to read it that definitely surpasses any review, obviously. It is definitely a useful luxury that aids in whether or not to purchase the book, decision. I’d imagine that is especially true for children’s literature. As you mentioned, it’s difficult to place 100% of your trust in reviews since they can be so subjective, biased, or just not someone’s cup of tea, which may reflect within the review. It’s also interesting to read reviews, particularly I find, after you’ve read a book, both on Kirkus, Goodreads, etc.…; just to see what the “professionals” as well as other casual readers thought about the book. Not that after aids a librarian in purchasing. Just through I’d share. I also like your point on reviews being handled with both class and good taste. I feel like I’ve seen overly harsh reviews on par with the romantic suspense review examples we read this week, both of which lacked class.

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  4. great thoughts and response. full points!

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