What kind of book reviews are the most useful to you?

At the Guardian:

The conclusion of the Harvard academics was broadly this: that professionals are slightly more likely to review and approve of books written by writers who worked for the same titles as they, or books that had won prizes. Amazon reviewers, on the other hand, were rather more eclectic, and in particular seemed to be more supportive of debut authors.

Although it's really about a different facet of the professional vs. crowd-sourced review question, this essay got me thinking about reviews & how people use them.

As I don't do any of the ordering for my library, I don't have to read reviews for work. So I tend to avoid reading full reviews of YA books before I read them because I know it's likely that I'll get around to 'em at some point, and I don't want to bias my own opinion when writing my own reviews. But then, after I've read the book (and written the review), I love to scroll down through the reader reviews at Amazon and GoodReads, just to see where/how my opinion lines up.

When I get bored with my TBR pile (it happens) and go out looking for Something New, I poke around in Novelist or any of the other "I want something like..." sites, or I check the archives at Smart Bitches or a few select other genre-specific blogs.

And, of course, if I want a recommendation from someone who knows my tastes, I just go ahead and ask you. Or Twitter.

What about you?

ETA: Speaking of book reviews, I hadn't heard about the Hay House BookNook initiative. Six thousand book bloggers. All getting self-helped and motivational. In the same place. *backs away slowly*

Comments

[Gail Gauthier]

Several years ago, there was a lot of talk in the blogosphere about bloggers only doing what they called "positive" reviews. At that point, I stopped reading most blog reviews as a way of saving time. If I saw a title being reviewed, I could be pretty much assured that the review was going to be a recommendation. That doesn't mean the review was wasted. If I see a title being reviewed a lot, it will stick in my mind, and I will be more likely to pick it up if I come across it somewhere. Like you, I often read reviews after I read a book.

If I don't care for a book I know has been getting a lot of attention and loving from what I call literary gatekeepers, I'll often skim some Amazon reviews to see what "real" readers thought of it. Sometimes they all agree with the general opinion, but often times I'll see quite a few that don't.

I only joined Goodreads a few weeks ago. I do hope to try some of the recommendations there. It's recommending books for me that I've never heard of, which could be a very good thing.

[Leila]

Yeah, I feel similarly about the purely 'positive' thing. Some sites do focus on positives, but actually talk about the books in depth, and I find those helpful/interesting, but the blogs that basically regurgitate the promo copy and then add some squeeing at the end? Not my bag. (Obvs, I understand that squeeing is necessary sometimes, but I start to get suspicious if it's happening most of the time.)

And I *love* reading Amazon reviews that disagree with the popular opinion, regardless of which camp I happen to fall in. For me, it's both entertaining and (sometimes) eye-opening, in terms of the complaints/points people make.

I haven't rated a book on GoodReads in ages and ages, so their recommendation engine might not be super-accurate for me (unlike the engine at Netflix, which is generally pretty dead-on), but I do a fair amount of lurking, and I look scrolling down through the reader-created booklists.

[Hope]

Could I convince you to do an an entire post on how to find a good book to read? I can no longer get to a library to look for new books. I'd like to buy more things on kindle, but I hate paying for things I end up not liking (I am used to used book prices, so I cringe at ebook prices these days.) The communities I trust most to recommend books I like are mostly recommending (really old) ones I can't get on Kindle. Argh. I could use some advice for how to find a book I want to read. Right now, I surf reviews and occasionally pick something out, but that means being at the mercy of the publication schedule. How do I find a really good book published two years whose ebook price might have dropped enough that I might like to buy it? Any help? A bone? Something?

[rockinlibrarian]

I don't really trust star ratings from any source-- for some people 5 stars means "This is a good book!" and for others it means "This is one of the greatest books EVER!"-- 3 stars could mean "There's nothing remarkable about this but it was a good read" or it could mean "This was mediocre." With all reviews, I want REASONS. The thing I most appreciate for collection development is the "This book would be good for people who like..." examples, and things that stand out about the book, make it unique. I like when faults are discussed in otherwise positive reviews and good points mentioned in otherwise negative ones. I do like multiple opinions. But I also saw my husband write a "review" for his friend's self-published book which he'd never read (and still hasn't-- don't tell) on Amazon... so I'll use "crowd-sourced" reviews, but I'll only trust the ones that actually seem to know what they're talking about.