ADS $10/month (1 & 2), $8/month (3 & 4) & $5/month (5-10)
They are wordy. They like to hear themselves type. They can’t seem to cut to the chase.
Since reopening TD, I’ve made a point of checking out various book review websites. I’ve traveled from the lofty NYTimes and Christian Science Monitor, from Locus and Publishers Weekly, to smaller book or novel review sites like the Podbram and Novel Teen Book Review Blog. There’s something to be said for brevity, especially these days.
When you review, please tell me something like:
- * Did you like the book or not?
- * Was it well written or not?
- * Did the plot and story make sense?
- * Who would enjoy reading it?
- * Most importantly, why might those readers find it interesting to read…or not?
For example, maybe something like this:
Atlantis by David Gibbins
One of the lamest reads, I had high hopes it would plunge me into an adventure worthy of its title and back blurb. It wasn’t. This book’s target audience is men who read Men’s Adventure novels, but I doubt that many men would sit through the windy archaeological dissertations delivered by “our hero” or by his sidekick, a breast-clad she-man love liaison. The agenda-filled undertows in this novel range from anti-pirating on the high seas to anti-female-circumcision and the enslavement of women by conservative Islam, and they are but very thinly clad.
Rating? Don’t bother reading it, even from the library. You’ll find it less than engaging. No matter how much of a fan you are of action-adventure novels, this one will leave you rolling your eyes…if you manage to get beyond the first few chapters.
What I find instead are these belabored essays that numb the brain and glaze the eyes. Come ON, reviewers. A review isn’t an editorial. It’s not a podium at commencement where your captive audience can’t get up and leave no matter how much they want to. Your review is on the Net. That means a visitor can take it or leave it…and will, just that fast.
Writing a review? Please, get straight to the point about why you think the book is worth buying or not!
(This, by the way, for your better understanding, is an editorial. Can you see the difference between this and a review? Oh, and, also by the way, try to make your writing something that keeps hooking your reader so they want to read through your entire “review,” even if it does beat around the bush or hedge the issue with a thousand extra words of padded “nothing said that can pin the reviewer down as really dissing or praising the book”.)
Tags: bad book revewers, bad book reviews, bad fiction reviewers, bad fiction reviews, bad novel reveiws, bad novel reviewers, book reveiws, Book Reviewers, fiction review, fiction reviewer, fiction reviewers, fiction reviews, novel reviewers, novel reviews
