With the rise of book bloggers, semi-pro zines that feature book reviews, fanzines, and sites that fall somewhere in between, every few months this question shows up on social media:
Who are book reviews for?
The conversation often pops up after an author has made a boneheaded response to a review on a blog, or a particular new title is getting lots of positive or negative attention, or an author asks on twitter “Should I interact with bloggers who review my book #AskingForAFriend.”
Are reviews for the blogger? Are they for other people who might want to read the book (some of whom may be authors)? Are they for publicists who have their eyes out for bloggers to send books to?are they for authors so the author knows if people like or don’t like their book?
Still brings us back to the same question. Who are book reviews for?
Umm…. uhh…. I actually have no idea. I can’t speak for other people, but I can tell you who my reviews are for.
I’m a selfish blogger, and thus I have a very selfish answer. My book reviews are for me. They help me:
remember what I’ve read
process what I’ve read
process all the feels from the book
relate to characters and be inspired by characters
improve my writing skills
inadvertently get better at life
And that’s it. My book reviews are a letter I’ve written to myself about something I’ve read. They are a time capsule. When I go back and read reviews I wrote years ago, it’s like chatting with a younger version of myself. I get to meet the version of myself who somehow crammed 600 books into a one bedroom apartment. The version of myself who didn’t yet know how Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun ended. The version of myself who’d read beautiful works of fiction and had no idea how to talk about them. I get to chat with a younger, more innocent version of myself. I laugh at how well-read my younger self thought she was.
I mostly use the craft of writing book reviews as a way to process my feelings about a book. I’m one of those readers who gets really, and I mean really invested in characters and stories. If I’m reading a book where the characters are in danger, it doesn’t
matter how many times I’ve read it before, I still worry that they will die before the book ends. It doesn’t matter how many times I tell myself “if this character died on page 20, this gonna be a really short book!”, I bite my nails the entire time until I know the person is safe. I’ve read the book The Martian three times and seen the movie I don’t know how many times, and it doesn’t matter because I’m still afraid every second will be his last. I know how the book The Sparrow ends, and it doesn’t matter, every time I read that book I get anxiety about the thing Emilio doesn’t want to talk about (or somehow even worse anxiety, because I know what’s coming).
You ever hear a piece of music that sends shivers down your spine? Not shivers down your spine like you’re scared, but shivers like an electric shock, like you had no idea music could make you feel that way. I seek out books that do that to me. In real life, I don’t react to things the way people expect me to, I tend to have a very delayed (as in weeks) reaction. With books, I get that shiver down my spine right away, I get a reaction that is happening in live time. And I crave that. Even better, I have just a smidgen of control over the speed of the reaction, because I’m controlling how fast I’m reading the book, or if I’m reading it just a few pages at a time or reading it as fast as I can.
When I read something that I have an emotional reaction to, even if that reaction was “hey, this was super fun!”, I have a bucket of feelings I’ve got to get through. I want to process what I’m feeling because it is fascinating and kinda fun, and if I process my feelings, if I name them, then I can allow myself to let go of them. Because when I put that book back on the shelf, I’m letting go. I’m telling the characters that I don’t need them anymore, and that they can survive without me in their life, and that maybe I’m ready to survive without them. Depending on the book, it’s hard to say good bye and let go.
So yeah, my book reviews are 100% for me. They give some much needed closure. They allow me to process what I’ve been through so I can get on with the rest of my life.
Andrea Johnson is Kickstarting a book of her collected reviews. She lives in Michigan with her husband and a LOT of books. You can find her at her review blog at The Little Red Reviewer and on twitter @redhead5318.
