In romance, mostly Dear Author and Azteclady's reviews on Karen's blog at the moment, with reasonably regular wanderings further afield. (And Elisa Rolle's LJ is on my default view, but what's she's reviewing is mostly ebooks, and until I got the Cybook earlier this year I Did Not Do Ebooks as a reader.) I used to read Smart Bitches a lot, but I've found it's not currently offering what I'm really looking for.
The reason I read DA in particular is that they have reviews that give me an idea of whether or not I might like to read the book. The thing for me is that I'm primarily an sf and fantasy fan, not a romance fan. I love a good romance when it works for me, but so very many books explicitly marketed as romance are utter wallbangers for me for reasons that have nothing to do with the writing quality [*] that I'm not willing to read one without a recommendation from someone whose opinion I trust.
Now, that recommendation can be in the form of a review by someone who didn't actually like the book herself, but who can set out why she didn't like it in a way that lets me see whether what she disliked is something I'd actually like. When I first stumbled across Smart Bitches, and the Dear Author, they thing that struck me was that the sort of reviews they wrote didn't pull any punches when they didn't like a book, but they had insight into why they didn't like it, and were well aware that other people might feel differently about the book, and thus their reviews were useful guides as to books that would be worth my while checking out.
[* A book goes on about how big cities are Teh Evil and a real romance heroine will eventually come to her senses and run back to the wonderful small country town that is the only place anyone can be truly happy? *Wallbanger*. I have lived in that small country town, and while I'm very happy to go back and visit, and I understand why some of my family love living there, I'm also very very happy to be living in the big city myself.]
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Re: Damned by faint praise
Date: 2008-12-18 09:17 pm (UTC)The reason I read DA in particular is that they have reviews that give me an idea of whether or not I might like to read the book. The thing for me is that I'm primarily an sf and fantasy fan, not a romance fan. I love a good romance when it works for me, but so very many books explicitly marketed as romance are utter wallbangers for me for reasons that have nothing to do with the writing quality [*] that I'm not willing to read one without a recommendation from someone whose opinion I trust.
Now, that recommendation can be in the form of a review by someone who didn't actually like the book herself, but who can set out why she didn't like it in a way that lets me see whether what she disliked is something I'd actually like. When I first stumbled across Smart Bitches, and the Dear Author, they thing that struck me was that the sort of reviews they wrote didn't pull any punches when they didn't like a book, but they had insight into why they didn't like it, and were well aware that other people might feel differently about the book, and thus their reviews were useful guides as to books that would be worth my while checking out.
[* A book goes on about how big cities are Teh Evil and a real romance heroine will eventually come to her senses and run back to the wonderful small country town that is the only place anyone can be truly happy? *Wallbanger*. I have lived in that small country town, and while I'm very happy to go back and visit, and I understand why some of my family love living there, I'm also very very happy to be living in the big city myself.]