Week 5 Prompt Response

After looking over the Amazon and Blog reviews for the Ebook-only title, "The Billionaire's First Christmas", I can safely say that I have no desire to read this book. The reviewers didn't say it was bad, they seemed to like it just fine. However, both reviews were very poorly done. The Amazon review is about what I would expect (sadly) from Amazon reviews. Run-on sentences, grammatical mistakes, etc. However, I was disappointed by the blog review. Usually, when I read "lol" in a review, I immediately stop reading and discard the opinion. However, as this is an assignment, I continued reading, but I was not impressed. This book does not seem to be romantic suspense, as I couldn't find any real source of suspense from the reviews. If all I knew about this book came from these reviews, I would definitely not purchase this for my library's collection.

The reviews about "Angela's Ashes" were refreshing to read. They were well-organized, and presented the review in a professional, objective manner. Some of the reviews could stand to be a bit longer in my opinion, but short reviews have their uses as well. I would seriously consider adding this book to my library's collection.

Is it fair that some types of books are reviewed to death while others are ignored? Yes, I do think that it is fair, as book reviews are a market, and like any market, products of high demand are valued. While it is fair, it is unfortunate. If librarians are not careful, collections will feature only the kinds of books that are heavily reviewed, while others are under-represented. Librarians must work to find quality materials, even for genres that are not reviewed often.

I do not feel that it is appropriate to only print positive reviews. While I understand the intention behind this, it does promote a "bandwagon" approach to reading. If some reviewers did not like a titan such as "The Hunger Games" or "Gone Girl", their opinions will not be heard, and popular books will be viewed as perfect. This is not the case, and negative reviews are necessary for providing opinions other than the popular opinion.

As for my personal reading choices, I like reviews that are organized, clear, spoiler-free, and give a quantifiable rating. I vehemently oppose spoilers, and I love being able to summarize an opinion into a number, such as "3 out of 5 stars". I tend to use Goodreads for finding reviews, but I am discovering new sources for reviews thanks to this class.