What reviews/reviewers do you trust, if any?

[novella]

Book reviews are the primary way I find out what is now being published and whether it might interest me, but they are so problematic. Full length reviews are often written by an author’s competitor or rival and many times wind up being a forum for the reviewer to talk about his or her expertise, at the expense of the reviewed book. Even with fiction, reviewers are often sidelined into plot exposition and dodgy comparisons with other writers. The New York Times Sunday book review section is notoriously bad about this. It’s really more of a showcase for reviewers than for book reviews. And my hit rate with those reviews is at a nadir.

I’m tending toward terse reviews by professional reviewers, such as the Books in Brief section of The New Yorker. The Washington Post is similarly brief and on point. Amazons customer reviews are useful, especially when there is more than a handful, but these are, by definition, written by people who were already attracted enough to a book to buy it, which is a limited population.

I find the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books overly nonfiction-oriented and intellectually breathless. Those publications seem more like Socialist polemics than book reviews forums. The Times Literary Supplement is much better, but I don’t have ready access to it.

Sometimes I see a review written by an author whose work I love, but I don’t think that has indicated that I will agree with his or her review. Fiction writers just don’t make the best fiction reviewers.

What reviewers/reviews do you trust, if any?

Novella

 

[booksblog.co.uk]

To guage the viewpoint of a specific reviewer, find a book that you feel strongly about (positively or negatively) and see if that reviewer feels the same way as you about it. People seem to have vastly different tastes in reading - you only have to look at the Tolkein fan club or the Harry Potter fans (like me) compared to the people that can't stand either.

I've written some reviews recently that some people have disagreed with so its likely they won't like the same books (case in point, I loved The Forever War, someone on this forum felt strongly that it was just another boring vietnam novel.)

I reviewed The Gunslinger here, and I hated it, but in the comments there's a guy that loves it. So there you go

 

[Ashlea]

I almost always read the Amazon reviews, if the book has managed to attract a half dozen or more I can usually tell if I'll like it or not. I also buy books through the QPB book club, which has useful descriptions. I also tend to read Entertainment Weekly cover to cover, which has a few pages of book reviews each week that are basic and generally on-target.

 

[Themistocles]

I use the tactic mentioned above of comparing a reviewer's opinion of a book you feel strongly about to gauge whether you share similar tastes, but the reviews that count most to me are the ones from this site and those of an Irish guy I met on the PC Gamer UK forum.

 

[novella]

Themistocles,
Yeah, I have two friends whose reviews are really reliable and we like similar things. The recs I get from them are usually for books that have been around a while.

It certainly is preferable to gauge a reviewer's taste over time, or to compare one's opinion to an old review. That's not possible in most cases, though. At least not for me.

Novella

 

[magemanda]

Since I read a lot of fantasy books, I have come to rely on the reviews in the SFX magazine. On a huge number of occasions, I have finished a book they've recommended and been well pleased. They tend to be pretty accurate. And now I tend to steer clear of the books they give few stars to. They don't seem to have much author bias either, and they pick up books that are by new authors or self-published as well, on occasion.