Great website! Bookmarked! I am impressed at your work!

Bye

Personally – I had no problem with the review – I didn’t think they bashed the author – just the book. I’ve never understood the whole “don’t review others once you are published” thing – I’m not looking forward to having to only gush once I’m published.

I don’t think you posted anything particularly wrong either Shan.

So when am I getting the were-penguin story? :penguin:

Eh, it was a simple misunderstanding. I mis-read something you wrote, you cleared it up, I felt like a doof for mis-reading you, struck out what was said and apologized. So please don’t feel bad, and please don’t feel like you need to avoid controversy. I enjoy a good debate now and then. It’s brrrrisk. It can suck if it gets personal, but a lot of times I think it’s just touchiness and a little clarification usually takes care of that.

I didn’t think you were trying to start an anti-author-as-reviewer brigade, by the way. I disagree with you, but hey, I disagree with HelenKay and Wendy about the heinousness of fanfic, and we’re still speaking to each other.

I watch with interest when blogs I frequent mention their ‘must buy’ authors, their excellent, A1 list. Most of the time they’re authors I’ve never read, and sometimes never heard of. I have my pangs of inadequacy that I’m somehow reading lesser, low brow pap, but then my ego reasserts itself. Bottom line is I read for ENTERTAINMENT. Likewise movies. Entertain me or I will tune you out, turn you off, put you down. I’ve been burned many many times (thank you NYTimes BS list) into buying books that were so unbelievably banal I felt completely ripped off and wondered WHY! why is everyone touting this title as the second coming in literature?

Okay, I veered away from romance there, but I think my point is (did I have one?) tastes vary. If they didn’t we wouldn’t have the amazing genres and sub genres that exist today, and no one should be made to feel bad because they read Nora, or absolutely love the ‘secret baby’ scenario, or whatever premise turns their crank, by anyone. Period. Again, we have the NY Times for that.

X

I’m of so many minds about this, I’m surprised my head hasn’t exploded. Personally, I don’t do it (other than to talk UP a book I love), mainly because what bugs me as a writer (and an anal one at that!) isn’t even going to be noticed by most readers. Like passive sentence contruction, fer instance. :hide: In any case, I’m more comfortable with recommending books, and explaining why I loved them, than with panning them.

However. Reviews happen. And writers reviewing their peers’ work is a very long-standing tradition. Granted, the system is fraught with potential problems — if you hate the reviewers’ books, for instance, how likely is it that you’ll take their reviews seriously? — but at least one assumes the reviewer does have some grasp of the process. Not that there aren’t some excellent non-fiction writing reviewers, but in theory, at least, a writer-reviewer probably won’t take a writer to task simply for using first person POV, or flashbacks, or any number of perfectly acceptable devices, unless the writer has not used those devices WELL (in his or her opinion). My biggest gripe is with badly written reviews — inaccurate, spoiler- and cliche-ridden reviews that don’t even display a mastery of seventh-grade level English. In that case, I have to say I’d rather be the recipient of a well-written, thoughtful, negative review than a lame, positive one that no one will take seriously.

Still, my gut feeling is that relatively new authors who haven’t yet had time to garner the respect of readers and their peers alike might want to consider the impact on that readership if they choose to pen a negative review. In fact, there was a recent flap over a first-time novelist’s panning Melissa Banks’s second novel in the NYT Books Review — in part over the superior tone of the review, but the subtext seemed to be that perhaps she hadn’t yet earned the *right* to critique another author’s work. For good or ill, where you are on your career ladder definitely influences how seriously others take what you have to say. Trust me, I know whereof I speak on this one.

That said, romance seems to be the only genre in which peer reviews are frowned upon. The closest thing we have to judging each others’ work is the RITAs. Whether this is a good thing or not, I don’t know. I suspect many of us don’t, and wouldn’t, do it because we simply don’t need the headaches which would inevitably ensue. We also know how blamed hard it is to actually produce an entire novel, and how easy it is to spot flaws in others’ work — and how seldom a review pointing out those flaws really ends up being useful in future work, no matter WHO writes the review.

So there you have it — authors are probably better qualified to review their peers’ books than most (not all!) non-writers, but to do so is to navigate a potential minefield. Which means this is a post with absolutely no conclusion.

:shrug:

Karen T.

See Shannon get called a fucktard.

See Shannon not give a shit.

Back to :type: