Mystery book reviews?
Do you ever go to www.amazon.com and check the book reviews before you buy a book? I sure do and find it to be an invaluable source. I get most of my reading material from the library and used books stores – hey, I’m poor. But, because I’m a writer I do invest in nonfiction books that will be helpful to my writing career. For instance I have four thesaurus – and I use them all. I have a lot of books about crime solving, detecting, etc. Authors keep writing new books so every couple of years, I bite my tongue and get rid of a few to make space on the shelves for new ones. One book that been gathering dust for years is, “How We Die,” by Sherwin Nuland. I know it will be interesting – I’ve had it for years but, I just cannot make myself open the book. Someday I will.
But I digress. As a writer I find it particularly interesting to read the bad, one and two star fiction reviews on amazon. Why? Because some of the more intelligent reviewers give reasons why they didn’t like the book, i.e., poor character development, bad plotting, stupid dialogue. That helps me when I’m writing a book. I don’t bother with the good reviews – they simply gush and that doesn’t help me. Sometimes when I’m reading a library book and can’t get through it I wonder, is it me? Or the book? Then I go to amazon and almost always find a majority of readers found the book to be uninteresting or hard to read. Helps me know I’m not THAT unusual.
How about you? Do you read amazon reviews?
