Book Club

[Carolina925]

I love using Goodreads and rarely, if ever, read reviews. Books, as in all things, are quite relative so I don't take much notice in what others think. I've loved books before and referred them to friends who didn't like them at all. I find Goodreads is the perfect venue to keep up with books I've read so I don't repurchase.

[beckyb1012]

I never read anyone's review on Goodreads, Amazon ect....  I just read the synopsis and that is usually sufficient to know if it will peak my interest. 

The monthly book forum is the only review I read since most are very good about not giving the ending away. 

[AZfem]

I also don't like reading reviews before reading or viewing a show. Will read after if I want. Have found different things speak to different people & someone else's viewpoint will not necessarily align with mine or resonate with me. 

[gardenman]

Customer reviews on books are "iffy" at best. There was a "customer" who gave every self-published book a one-star review, and the entire text of their reviews was, "This book is self-published." Given the hundreds/thousands of reviews they posted, they were either an amazingly fast reader or just spent all their time looking for self-published books to give a one-star review to. (Kudos to Amazon/Goodreads for eventually deleting most of those.)

I don't hear much about Fiverr these days, but writers used to be able to buy reviews from Fiverr. (I never did.) You'd pay X amount of dollars per review. Whenever you see a brand new book hit the market with a hundred or so reviews on day one, it's usually bought reviews. In general, books get one review for every hundred copies sold. That's pretty much how the math works. To get a hundred reviews on day one, something fishy is going on.

There were also review blackmailers who would threaten to post multiple negative reviews unless you paid them to drive down your review rank. If you see a book with lots of one-star reviews, they're either a horrible writer, or they didn't pay a blackmailer. (Kudos to Amazon/Goodreads again for sorting out those reviews.)

Some people love to spoil important storylines. Some people are just idiots. Some people have way too much free time to post useless reviews. Goodreads and Amazon try their best to sort things out, but there are more idiots posting reviews than there are Amazon employees. 

In general, with book reviews, read the synopsis, check the review numerical score, and avoid the full written reviews unless you want to be spoiled. Because some idiot will spoil things given the chance. 

[teganslaw]

Star reviews don't always mean anything IMO.  There are certain books on Goodreads with 5 star ratings or close that were disappointing to me or that I didn't finish reading. I usually stay away from books with multiple 5 star ratings, as my tastes are often different from the majority.  When a book gets great reviews there is a high possibillity that I won't like it. 

[icezeus]

I love good reads. I use it primarily to keep track of books that I have read, as well as to access the author's published summary of the story, which is essentially what you would find on the inside of the jacket or the back of the book.

Every blue moon, I may look at how many stars a book has. 

[smoochy]

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@icezeus wrote:

I love good reads. I use it primarily to keep track of books that I have read, as well as to access the author's published summary of the story, which is essentially what you would find on the inside of the jacket or the back of the book.

Every blue moon, I may look at how many stars a book has. 

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I decided to give it another try. It really does make it simple to record your reading habits, catalog books etc. I don't bother with the reviews and concentrate on organizing my library instead