Ranting and Raving

Hey,
Get ready for a rant folks. What has brought on this rant you ask? Well last week at her blog writer Shannon Hale posted a commentary on How to be a reader: book evaluation vs. self-evaluation. Some background: Shannon Hale is well known writer of books for YA and adults. She resides in the area that I live in, and I have seen her speak. Hale is a wonderful person; she's very funny and insightful. Her presentation about the lack of respect in the YA/Fantasy genre among other writer's struck a chord that I still remember to this day.

In her posts she asks book reviewers to ask themselves the following questions. I'll provide my own answer under each question.

1. Do you find that the anticipation of reviewing the book has changed your reading experience?
It certainly makes me think about a book more analytically. I make notes in my head as I read along the lines of "Oh that's cool" or "Nice parallel." Sometimes I do worry about what the hell am I going to write.

2. Are you rating the book even as you read? Or do you wait until the end to sum it all up?
Every book I read starts at a 10 (figuratively) & it's up to the book to maintain that.

3. Does knowing you'll be reviewing it (or rating it) publicly affect which books you pick up in the first place?
No, I'll read all kinds of books. C'mon I read comic books for god's sake.

4. Does the process of writing the review itself change how you felt about the book?
Not really.

5. What is your motivation to assign a rating to a book and declare it to the world?
Read below after the questions.

6. If you review a book but don't rate, why not? What do you feel is your role as reviewer?
While I understand that some people need some quantifiable rating I don't. Ratings like stars are an easy way for a reviewer to sum up their review for their readers. For me personally the only real judgement for a book is: Would I reccommend it to someone else? or Would I read another book by that author?

I have been a happy book blogger for about 1 year and 8 months now. In that time I have had the opportunity to look at myself as a reader/reviewer. Now I pride myself on being able to filter out books I know I won't like and don't want to waste my time with. If a book isn't interesting around the 100 page mark then I move on, because life is short. I started this blog because I wanted a place where I could keep track of what I've read, what I thought, and how many books I've read. It's a self-motivating force for me to get rid of the mountain of a TBR pile that somehow fits into my apartment. I don't really see myself as an authority by any means. Anyone who may stumble upon this blog can evaluate me as a reviewer by whatever criteria they want. Don't get me wrong I love it when any reader drops by (and wave an internet-size hello) but to be honest I write this blog mainly for Me, Myself and I.

So there's some self-evaluation for you all. Have a great day! Book Slave.