on bad reviews

[coraa]

One of the things that I have learned -- something I know that several of you already know -- is that sometimes a bad review can serve as more of a recommendation than a good review.

Bad reviews of books are often more entertaining to read, of course. Although the food porn elements of Ratatouille were why I went to see it, and a big part of why I loved it, my favorite line was one of the nasty critic, Anton Ego, who said toward the end, "We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read." It's true. I just finished reading Roger Ebert's Your Movie Sucks, and was entertained from start to finish, because watching him skewer bad movies with wit and grace is a delight. But often, too, a negative review will tell you more about a book than a positive one -- and sometimes that means that, quite against the intention of the negative reviewer, the negative review makes me want to read the book.

I've taken to reading the one-star reviews of books I'm considering first. Not because I'm an inherently negative person, I don't think, but because they often cut to the heart of the matter more quickly than the good or mediocre reviews. Not always in line with the reviewer's intention, either.

Of course, sometimes a negative review serves its intended purpose. I've been spared several dreadful books because I read reviews that noted that the author had a one-dimensional and misogynistic view of women and that showed in his female characters. I've been spared other dreadful books for more prosaic but still important reasons: if too many people think the characters are wooden and the prose clunks like a beat-up jalopy, I can probably give it a pass. True, negative reviews aren't always accurate, but if more than one or two people say the same thing, and it's something that's important to me... well, my time is finite.

But sometimes a bad review makes me hit "Order Now with One Click" faster than a good review ever could.

For instance. A while ago, I was considering buying a book, and I took a look at the one-star reviews. One of them ran along the lines of, "This book contains a homosexual relationship, and it's portrayed as positive and healthy! The characters even kiss! HOW PERVERSE!" That was enough to make me order the book, as it happens. (I think it was probably something by Lynn Flewelling, actually.)

Another example: often, middle-grade and YA books will have horrified parent reviews that say something like, "This book contains one swear word and mentions sex in a neutral and non-explicit way! PASS THE SMELLING SALTS." For one thing, to be honest with you, I find this hilarious, and it adds a moment of extra amusement to my book purchasing process, which is not a bad thing. But for another thing... well, I don't think that a swear word and a mention of sex makes a book a good book, but if that's the worst you can say about the book, well.

Most recently, after I read Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret, and made a sad face at discovering that Sport was out of print, I went poking around and found Nobody's Family Is Going To Change, also by Fitzhugh. I knew I'd read it, but I couldn't remember much about it -- I only read it once, and it was a long time ago. So I read the blurb and then I read the one-star review, which was an angry screed about how terrible this book was for portraying a father figure as less than perfect, for approving of children having aspirations that their parents didn't like, for approving of children having initiative and agency. It ended with a bluntly didactic note to children that they should ignore this book and realize that their parents know best and always, always have the best in mind for them.

It made me remember the book vividly, let me tell you, and once I remembered it I ordered it. Although I did wish there was some way that I could order a copy and send it to Mr./Ms. Your Parents Always Know Best And You Must Obey Them Unquestioningly's kid, if they have a kid.

Incidentally, this is part of why, if I don't like a book, I will say so in the review, and I will say why. Because if I make up platitudes about a book I don't like -- or don't review it at all -- then nobody gets any benefit; it's pap. But if I say, "This was a Middle-Aged, Middle-Class, Modern White Person With Ennui Contemplating An Affair book, and I am bored absolutely beyond tears by those," well, some people love those books. Some people eat them up, and go back for more. And that's fine; I don't expect everyone to share my tastes. And people who do love that stuff now know that such-and-such book is that type of book, and they can go order it, and good for them.

(There are other reasons I review the way I do, but I'll save those for another post.)

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

About a month ago, I read an Amazon review that wailed about how the author had no understanding of gothic fiction and the entire book was just her excuse to wallow in her misandry. Looking at the other things he had reviewed, I saw that all but one other were glowing reviews of sausagefests that barely bothered noticing women existed. The one other negative review also screamed "Misandry!" and was for a horror movie that makes my feminist horror fan friend curl their toes in joy. Obviously, I'm reading the book now.

My review style is to say whatever comes to my head!

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Ha, yes. I've seen a few reviews that run along the lines of, "There are no major male characters in this book! How unfair to men! Waaaah." They always make me seriously consider getting the book.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I remember a YA I read earlier this year. The cover was gorgeous and had a girl and her dog in what appeared to be a tower room of a castle, and the title indicated it was about them. Sadly, they were barely mentioned in the first half, and very secondary to the likable but very generic angsty prince. Amazon had reviews going on and on about how marketting was insane, alienating half the audience by putting a GIRL on the cover. I wanted to lecture marketting for the CRUEL DECEIT.

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

For instance. A while ago, I was considering buying a book, and I took a look at the one-star reviews. One of them ran along the lines of, "This book contains a homosexual relationship, and it's portrayed as positive and healthy! The characters even kiss! HOW PERVERSE!" That was enough to make me order the book, as it happens. (I think it was probably something by Lynn Flewelling, actually.)

Haha, I love those. If the only bad thing anyone has to say about a book is "OMG IT HAS THE GAYZ" then it's probably a pretty good book.

I don't write too many reviews on Amazon, but there was one book I felt compelled to write a review for -- it was a gay pirate romance. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but I felt that it had to be said in a review somewhere that the premise was completely and utterly ridiculous and illogical (even for a romance novel). Once you get over the fact that the book assumes that all pirates are gay men who become instantly involved in long-term monogamous relationships without dating around first, it's a fun book. But honestly, that premise is so utterly ridiculous that I thought people should be aware of it before buying the book.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. If the worst thing you can say about it is "Boys kiss each other!" then it's probably pretty good! (Not to mention that I like books with gay characters, so that's a feature for me, not a bug.)

Also, hee. I am highly amused at the idea of the Instantly Monogamous Gay Pirate Crew.

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

If you're interested, the book is Brethren: Raised By Wolves Volume 1 (there are currently three books in the series I think). The series is definitely my guiltiest pleasure! So bad, and yet so much fun to read.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nifty! It looks like good airplane/bathtub reading. (I have a terrible weakness for guilty pleasure books.)

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

For some reason, I once chewed my way through an entire huge volume of criticism by John Updike -- 'Hugging the Shore' -- and in his very shallow, unperceptive, dismissive review of Jean Rhys, he quoted some passages from her autobiography that made me run out to my favourite bookstore (o tempora o mores) and buy it immediately, and then all her novels, her short stories, her letters, biographies....altho that's not quite what you were talking about. I remember loving but viscerally disagreeing with Pauline Kael's movie reviews; if she raved about something I knew I'd hate it, and vice versa.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I've actually had that relationship with other people -- "I hated this book; you should read it" -- because we just had so very different tastes. Part of it, I think, is realizing that there's not generally a platonic, objective Good or Bad.

[squirrel-monkey.livejournal.com]

I would like to point out that a bad review and a negative review are not the same thing. A bad review can be positive but so idiotic as to not be helpful. In my mind, a "bad" review only exposes its author as an incapable reviewer; a negative review offers a poor opinion of the book, for valid (good negative review) or silly (bad negative review) reasons.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

That's true. A negative review can be a good review, and a positive review can be terrible. In fact, part of the reason I ignore most five-star reviews is that they tend to be effusive without much detail, and that's not very helpful.

[janni.livejournal.com]

I was in a writing chat earlier this week where people were saying they avoided giving negative reviews because they didn't want to hurt writers. I kept trying, without much success, to explain that while a bad review might hurt a writer's feelings, there was no real evidence it would hurt the book.

(With an exception made -- maybe -- for bad reviews places like SLJ, where reviews do influence how librarians spend limited budgets ... but those aren't the reviews everyone's usually talking about, anyway/)

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Yes; if, after reading books I didn't like, I couldn't say negative things about them, I would probably just not post about them. I doubt I'm alone in that. And I have trouble believing that a book that dropped like a stone without leaving even a ripple in its wake would do better than one that was discussed, even if the discussion wasn't wholly positive. It might hurt the author's feelings, but that doesn't mean it hurts the author's book.

I do think that standards are different for things like SLJ or Library Journal or Kirkus, if only because a review saying, "This book has pirates in it and I hate pirates" there isn't really appropriate. Those reviews have a point beyond giving a single person's impression. But I think that individual reader reactions are valuable too, and there's no reason not to be honest there.

[janni.livejournal.com]

And I have trouble believing that a book that dropped like a stone without leaving even a ripple in its wake would do better than one that was discussed, even if the discussion wasn't wholly positive.

My book with fewer all-positive reviews has definitely done less well than my book with more both-positive-and-negative reviews.

This really brought home that negative reviews are not so much a sign a book is flawed (though of course, all books are, one way or another, for one reader or another), but that's it's getting read./i>

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

One of these days I'm going to write up a piece about the difference between responses, reviews, criticism, and critiques.

(Short form: response = personal reaction. Review = attempt to inform potential readership. Criticism = academic. Critique = fodder for revision.)

ETA: hit "post" too fast. My reason for doing this would be to say all four of those things have their purpose; they're only bad when one masquerades as another.

[donaithnen.livejournal.com]

Yay Lynn Flewelling! :)

And yeah, that's one of the reason why i like Zero Punctuation. Not only is it amusing, but if the worst things he can say about a game are issues i don't really care about, then that probably says pretty good things about it in terms of my own enjoyment.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- with Zero Punctuation, I know he's going to hate the games I like because he doesn't like JRPGs. Which is fine; he doesn't have to like JRPGs, and I'm not terribly bothered by his making fun of them, even though I do like them. (And often his critiques are hilarious. I loved the one with the shot of Lightning from FF13 that had the speech bubble coming out of her mouth that said, "Yes, I actually am a girl this time. I'm as surprised as you are!")

[artemis-lizzie.livejournal.com]

"This book contains one swear word and mentions sex in a neutral and non-explicit way! PASS THE SMELLING SALTS."

This is off-topic, but I just wanted to say, this was completely hilarious and reminded me that I love reading your writing.