Prompt 5

According to Erin, there are five guidelines for writing reviews.  These guidelines can also be used to help librarians decipher what a well written review should look like.  Basically, reviews should understand what the author attempted to accomplish in his book but with the understanding that the author should bot be blames if he did not achieve his goal.  Review should also use a few direct quotations from the book so that the reader can get his own impression about the book.  Obviously book reviews should be a summary of the plot but should not give away anything, especially the ending. 

Honestly, I have never read a book review before.  I use plot summaries to help me decide if a book sounds interesting or not.  I will read just about anything and I do not want someone else's opinion to sway me on my book choices.  Obviously, I will have to peruse book reviews for the library so this week was good practice. 

Using these guidelines, I looked at a few different book reviews.  I first looked at the blog review of The Chosen One.  I actually felt that this was more of a plot summary, not a review.  There was a review from Amazon on this same book.  This review, by Dr. Leonard Rosmarin, was an actual review of the book/author.  However, using the above guidelines, this was not a well written review.  This review did not contain any direct quotes from the book and it did not have a plot summary. 

I then looked at the Kirkus reviews.  I liked that these reviews were so honest.  However, this is probably not a great site to use alone.  Perhaps if you are torn on whether or not to include a certain title in your library collection, this site will help you decide. 

I then looked at the Angela's Ashes review.  This review was so long that I did not want to read it.  We can all agree that the work day does not have enough minutes in the day to get through reviews like these.  Yes, this review was well written, but it was way too long!!  I felt like I was reading the first chapter, not a review.  However, of all of the reviews that I looked through, this one best followed Erin's guidelines. 

I work in circulation so I talked to a few of the librarians at my branch about what review sites they use to help choose materials.  Unfortunately, most of the materials for our branch are chosen by the acquisitions department.  We are allowed to request items that we want but that does not mean that we will always get them.  Our children's librarian uses  School Library Journal and Scholastic.  She also checks the ALA site for upcoming award winners to see if we need to request additional copies. 

I don't think it is fair that popular authors/books receive so much attention and reviews while less known titles receive very few.  All books deserve a review.  If a title has been published, there is a market for it somewhere.  Perhaps it would not be a title that you personally would read, but there is someone out there who would.  Little to no reviewed titles may be overlooked and this will affect the library's collection.  At my branch, we have only one copy of The Book Thief but 22 of The Hunger Games.  Perhaps this is due to book reviews?? 

I still will not use book reviews to help me choose books for my personal reading but I do see their allure.  I do not have a favorite review source yet but I am sure that by the end of this semester that I will.