I’ve been mulling over book reviews and what they are good for over the past several years. I’ve written several drafts and most of them descended into rage fueled rants that I was simply not comfortable with. So it’s just been an idea floating around inside my head.
Until today.
For me, a book review is simply a blog post with my thoughts (random, scattered, tangential OR completely ordered) on the book as I read it, as I thought about it beforehand and afterwards. As you get to know me and see how I rate and write about various books, you begin to learn the ins and outs of what I’m looking for or not in a book. My book reviews are tiny little snapshots of me as a whole person, glimpses into my soul as it were. I’ve always known this and operated this way, but hadn’t mentally codified it.
A book report on the other hand, is a medium by which you the reader hope to convince someone else, probably a tyrannical evil stepmother, that you have read the book and comprehended the basic plot and perhaps some of the deeper meanings if the author was the kind of jerkwad who thought their words were akin to gold.
I can understand why book reports exist. Kids need to be forced to do certain things and reading books is one of those things. They might not comprehend everything in the book, but their minds are like rubber, it must be stretched. If you just give it stuff that doesn’t challenge it, it will never grow.
But once you start reading for pleasure, all that changes. Once you start reviewing, the reasons that drive you onward, while not infinite, are so much greater that trying to nail it down to even a handful is a fool’s errand. Why I review and more importantly, HOW I review are going to vastly different from you.
That is why I had to leave the site Goodreads (which I now refer to as Devilreads). They enforced a certain way of writing a review that was more akin to a book report than an actual book review. When everyone says the same thing about a book, with just tiny, minor variations, it makes for a very bland experience. The whole point of having a place with thousands of different people is to get thousands of different views and thoughts and ideas.
That is why I have always used my blog as my main book review outlet. Here I can say what I want, how I want and any old thing that enters my head is perfectly acceptable in my review. If I’m reviewing “How to BBQ a Raccoon” and I end up spending the whole post talking about a camping trip the book made me think of, that’s my choice. Now, if you don’t like that, the wonderful thing about blogging is that you can stop following me at any point.
Give me the freedom to speak my mind as I wish.
