Why I Don’t Care About Reviews
This seems a strange post for me to write, given my blog is dedicated to reviewing and talking about books (though I am determined in my belief that this year, this website is a catalogue for me). But it’s a true post - I don’t care about reviews. A review can be pointless and more telling of the person who reads it, than the book itself.
A friend made a post on the internet describing how they really truly enjoyed a book, but found that the reviews called it boring and slow. I thought about this. Reviews on the internet can be written with many things in mind: people follow trends. People don’t want to be criticised for enjoying a book that everyone else hates. I would faithfully declare Twilight as being the worst book I’d ever read, god how could Stephanie Meyer write such trash! And whilst they’re not the best, I actually, really just loved those books anyway. I faithfully read the same copy of New Moon until the cover fell off and I had to buy a new copy. I don’t think that kind of thinking has changed, and I don’t think it was isolated to just me. I felt the same joy when I read Midnight Sun as an adult - knowing the book was bad, but loving it anyway.
But back to reviews - reviews are written by a person based on their thoughts at that time. People could be going through grief, heartbreak, joy - those things change how they perceive and read books. If I followed a fast paced thriller with a Brandon Taylor novel, I would hate it. But not because Taylor’s writing was bad, or because their book was bad. It’s a review based on my perception at the time. I could read it 10 years later and find it to be the most profound, touching novel of my life. My original review of The Dutch House no longer reflects my current thoughts on the book. As I change, so do my opinions on books.
Reviews are also short, punchy, to the point. No one will sit and type the nuances of pacing, characterisation and plot - it is much quicker, easier and effective to write “boring, slow, characters one dimensional”. To write that a character felt one dimensional wouldn’t explain anything; their characterisation could be incredibly personal to one reader, and incredibly impersonal to another. I really loved Everything’s Fine because my love for romance sits higher than my feelings on the nuance of interracial relationships and the tangle of politics. A friend of mine hated it for that reason - because she felt the ending fell flat, whereas I enjoyed it because I loved the romance of it! And neither of us were wrong.
The idea that people can read “bad” books is a sad one. A review is rarely a review of the book itself, but of the experience someone has had reading it.
I leave with one final thought. People hate Rodham because it is silly to the point of nonsense, and to some people, not in a good way. I loved it because it showcased what Sittenfeld does best; she brings characters to life, even more so than the actual people her books are based on. She creates a real sense of intimacy between the reader and the character without you even realising it. To me, that far outweights the scenes of Bill Clinton playing the saxophone naked.