I don’t trust book reviews any more.
I only listen to my friends about books.
I just don’t trust REVIEWERS, actually.
Book reviews are biased, sensational, overwrought, hyperbolic, and sometimes, wrong. These book reviews also happen to have a lot of undue power over the book buying public. Sometimes I have to blink back angry blindness when I read book reviews, or see the NYT Bestseller list. For someone who hopes to enter the world of publishing, this might be a bad thing.
OK OK I’m going too far! Who’s being hyperbolic, now?!
Book reviews should certainly still exist; I write them, and maybe that’s why I seem to have a love/hate relationship with them. Mostly I love them, but some recent fracases simply seem to have me overheated at the moment!
Maybe reviewers should have a few rules imposed on them, guidelines to allow the reading public to read a book before biases have a chance to form, before mass hysteria is caused. These guidelines, nay!, rules will give more space and credence to book reviews and could bring back one of the most successful methods of book selling- word of mouth.
1. One cannot review a book by an author you’ve dined with.
2. One cannot review a book until one month after it has been released for general consumption.
3. One cannot write the phrase “novel of the century” within a book review.
4. One cannot speculate/suggest a book for any awards.
5. Book reviews may not be longer than one page, single spaced, 11 point font.
6. Stars, grades, and thumbs are VERBOTEN.
7. No references to your marriage, snacking preferences, neighborhood, or literary ambitions within a review.
8. For every book one reviews that is sent to one by a publicist, one must buy a book (from a store) to review.
8b. Said book should be written by an author who has yet to become a bestselling author.
Can you think of any more, or better, rules?
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