Week Five Prompt: Book Reviews

When I purchase books, I tend to rely on a balance of professional reviews, patron demand, and personal reviews. Certain kinds of literature get reviewed more than others, and genre fiction and different formats often get ignored. I order graphic novels for my library, and I tend not to see too many of them in review journals. The graphic novels that are occasionally reviewed are standalone works that are not among the most popular items like series with multiple media adaptations. For those things I have to look at specific review sites like Comic Book Resources.

I don't think publications should adhere to a no negative reviews policy. I know they are interested in promoting books, but seems a little dishonest. That being said, negative professional reviews by themselves would not necessarily dissuade me from purchasing a title. I know that Bill O'Reilly's books are often not well-reviewed by professional sources. They are still seriously popular at my library, and I will still buy them.

I look at user reviews on Amazon for two reasons: I want to know what people who like this book like about it and what other people don't like about it. That way I get a sense for what genre or comics readers in general think about a particular work. The negative reviews were useful when I ordered teen fiction because I could anticipate where a library user might have a problem with a book. For example, if a parent left a negative Amazon review for a triple-starred YA book because they felt the content was not suited to age group, I could prepare myself.

That brings me to the example reviews. I would definitely purchase Angela's Ashes with those reviews. Consistently good professional reviews are an indication that something might get a lot of attention and be sought after by our patrons, and when something is in Kirkus, Library Journal, Booklist, AND School Library Journal, you know it's getting attention.

I am undecided about the e-book review. For that, I would probably look at aggregate user reviews. If most of them were 3 or 4 stars, I would purchase the item. I think it's important to listen to what genre readers like and judge those book son their own merits; formulaic is not necessarily a bad thing. Romance is one of the most-read genres at my library, and if we didn't have a subscription to Romantic Times or pay attention to review blogs, our collection would be rather limited if we went by professional reviews alone.