Booking through Thursday: Let’s Review

Here we go. Another Thursday, another Booking through Thursday entry.

How much do reviews (good and bad) affect your choice of reading? If you see a bad review of a book you wanted to read, do you still read it? If you see a good review of a book you’re sure you won’t like, do you change your mind and give the book a try?

This really depends on who’s doing the reviewing and whether their tastes mesh with mine. For example, if Rosario or Lisabea give me a book rec, I am more likely to pick it up because they generally seem to look for the same sorts of things in their book reading that I do. Neither of them have let me down yet, and so I tend to give more credence to what they say than, say, some random reviewer on amazon.com. That being said, I have a book on my TBR pile which I added to the list of books I should read at some point soon because Holly over at Book Binge hated it. I don’t think Holly has bad taste in reading material, just to make that clear because I know she’s been reading. It’s just that she thought the hero of that particular book was too foppish, as I recall, and the book was set in Georgian England and she just didn’t find powdered wigs all that sexy, whereas I was intrigued, because I was tired of reading run of the mill Regencies at the time, and I got the impression the hero might be a bit less of a beefcake type than I’d been reading lately, which is all to the good. I still haven’t read the book, incidentally, which I think was called Prince of Swords by Anne Stuart, so it really could be epically bad. But I probably wouldn’t even have considered it were it not for Holly’s thoughts on it.

I also have to admit to a secret desire to try and read books that other people pretty much universally claim are bad. Cassie Edwards? I want to read her at least once, just to say I have read her. Ditto for John Norman, whose Gor books sound astoundingly awful and misogynistic, but also kind of cracky. Also ditto for Jean Aule, and I even have Clan of the Cave Bear on my ebook reader.