What are reviews for?

[boxofdelights]

I just read that

Leaving a "This wasn't for me" review is like striding to within 6 inches of a stranger's face, telling them, "I don't like kale," and then walking away. Nothing is given, nothing is gained. Silence is preferable.

https://wandering.shop/@zzclaybourne/109824883554244963

....What? How is me posting a review in my own social media, which no one reads unless they chose to, anything like striding to within 6 inches of a stranger's face?

Honest reviews are good no matter what they say. Good for the reviewer, good for the prospective reader, good for the reader who wants to compare their own reaction to others', even good for sales of the book.

Probably I am just oversensitive to being told by a man to shut up.


Edited to add: The writer clarified that he was talking about professional reviews whose subtext is, "[I am The Norm and this book is by/for/about marginalized people; therefore,] This wasn't for me."


Thank you all for helping me to think about this.

Comments

I'm with you!

[jesse_the_k]

Especially with the menz telling me what to do.

It's so much more fun to pan a book -- terrible books make for lovely book-club evenings.

My best reads are in the "here, read this now!" department. I frequently lack the words for why it's so good.

[corvidology]

TBH, I've found some of my favourite things through reading reviews that were basically 'this wasn't for me and here's why.'

One person's trash is another person's treasure. :D

[redbird]

"This wasn't for me" by itself is only useful if I know you/the reviewer pretty well. But few people post anything as brief and unspecific as "this wasn't for me."

"This wasn't for me, because despite the title, it's all about kale, not rocketships" could be useful even if I didn't know anything about the reviewer. "I didn't like The Complete Kale Cookbook because it's about kale" might tell me something about the reviewer, but nothing useful about the book.

[asakiyume]

Yeah, I'd walk away from his comment. The reviews aren't for him, the author: they're for you (a record of your reaction, a memory of your experience), for your friends, and for other people who come across them.

As a reader and a reviewer, I appreciate "this wasn't for me." As a reviewer, it lets me express negative thoughts about books that maybe everyone I know is loving. I don't want to rain on my friends' enjoyment, but I want to express my thoughts! So by saying "This wasn't for me," I feel like I'm acknowledging that many others may like it, but I happen not to. As a reader, I like it for the same reasons: it lets people who feel hesitant express a negative opinion--and I value that! Sometimes it warns me off something; other times it makes me think that yeah, that's that person's idiosyncrasy and I'll probably like the book.

[sovay]

Silence is preferable.

What an obnoxious assertion.

("This isn't for me" isn't even "This book sucks.")

[sabotabby]

See, I blame the algorithm.

If someone leaves a bad review of my book on Goodreads or Amazon, not only do I see it (and carry the hurt around with me all day) but other people see it and then they don't buy the book. So I don't pan books on Goodreads even when I hate them. Or on Twitter because dogpiling is terrible. But I will absolutely pan a book on my own journal, because it's not for the author, it's for people who are genuinely interested in my opinions.

[sovay]

I've found some of my favourite things through reading reviews that were basically 'this wasn't for me and here's why.'

There is a certain kind of negative Anthony Lane review that almost guarantees I will like whatever movie he's trashing.

[corvidology]

Exactly! :D

Even on the amateur level *g* I have a mate where I'll tell her why I didn't enjoy something and then say 'and that's exactly why I know you'll love it.' Her tastes are a bit more hardcore than mine.

[isis]

I wonder if this use of "review" is in the ff.net sense, that is, a comment to the author left on a work? The reason I say this is the phrasing "Leaving a...review" rather than "Writing a...review," and as you say, how is a critical review posted in your own space "in your face" to a stranger?

I mean, there have certainly been criticisms of critical reviews/anti-recs/caveated recs, which like you I'm baffled by. I used to do a lot of fanfiction recs and reviews on my website, and wished more people did that sort of thing, because if I know what sort of things people like and can compare them to my tastes, their recommendations are much more useful to me!

(The only validity to that statement is that "This wasn't for me" is not particularly useful if it ends there; "This wasn't for me because..." is extremely helpful to potential readers, though!)

[watersword]

Oh my gosh, you too? Anthony Lane and I have a 100% inverse taste; anything he likes I cannot stand, but if he pans a movie I am almost guaranteed to love it. I hope he never stops writing, he is the most reliable guide to movies in the world.

[isis]

Well, reviews on Goodreads and Amazon aren't really intended for the author either, but for people who are potentially interested in the book. However in this case there's no reason for these potential readers to be interested in or invested in my opinion per se, so a bad review is only useful if the reviewer explains why they didn't like it - what didn't work for them, what they were hoping for and why the book fell short, and so on. (And in this case, the potential reader can evaluate whether the things that pinged the reviewer are important or unimportant to their own enjoyment of a book, or even if these things presented as negatives are positives to them!)

I am sorry if I ever hurt you by posting a bad review of one of your books, not that I know what name you write under :-) but I do pan books I hate on Goodreads (or I did when I used the site, haven't for a while) so that others who care about the same things in books that I do will know that the book probably isn't for them, either!

[sabotabby]

What I object to is more the social mediafication of books. I mean, back in the day, you would know if a critic gave you a bad review, and presumably cry about it, but if Random Reader Estelle said something scathing to Random Reader Bernadette at the garden party, it may have affected Bernadette's choice to read it, but not Random Reader Winifred, who was not invited to said garden party. Whereas with Amazon/Goodreads rankings, it's not just about two friends discussing taste, but the book's visibility to other potential readers.

Which isn't to say social media reviews aren't useful, but they're easily manipulated and replace flawed gatekeeper critics with something that's arguably not any better.

I've only gotten a few vicious reviews so far (both books came out last year) and the only one-star one was actually so funny that my co-author and I wanted to use it in our publicity. I'm a high school teacher so I have a thick skin.

But anyway, I think the difference for me is that blog reviews don't feed the algorithm, and are more akin to the garden party, whereas GR/Amazon/Twitter reviews do, and that's problematic not because of what people are saying but how it affects what gets seen at all.

[misbegotten]

Of course, it's not just books. What I found interesting about this Tripadvisor prank was the fact that the culprit did it, he says, because he finds review sites problematic for the reason you mentioned.

[krait]

That's exactly the sense I got; for one thing, as boxofdelights says, the "in someone's face" comparison makes no sense - unless this is a review process that involves approaching the author. So I definitely understood it to mean, "going into the author's space to leave a review" rather than, say, writing up a review in one's own space. It read to me exactly like some fandom discussions I've seen, when people who leave comments on fanfic about their personal tastes not being met. What's the point of commenting on a Kirk/Spock fic with "I don't like Kirk/Spock" - do you think the author is going to rewrite it to suit you better?

Professional reviews in third-party places such as a newspaper are fine; personal notes on what you're reading and whether you enjoyed it are fine; going onto an author's blog or website to tell them you disliked their book is rude and aggressive.

It makes sense and is helpful to put a note on your own fridge that you don't like kale. Keeping that right next to your grocery list so that you won't accidentally buy it again is practical and hurts no one. It's going to the grocery store and then telling the guy stocking shelves that you don't like kale that comes across as rude, and for good reason. :D

[kathmandu]

""review" is in the ff.net sense, that is, a comment to the author left on a work?"'

That's how I read it too. Leaving a review *on* a work is what you do on ff.net, and ff.net describes as 'reviews' what AO3 describes as 'comments'. And the key there is that all reviews are delivered to the author in their email, so it is direct speech from the reader to the author, in a way that *posting* on your own sites is not.

[sabotabby]

Weirdly, this is not the first time I've heard of a thing like this! Besides putting Ram Ranch on Google Maps, which ranks up there with one of my favourite pranks.

[lcohen]

read through the comments and agree with the later ones that i would not, for example, comment on an author's website or on a fic site that i didn't like their work. however, yes, i would do so on goodreads or amazon, but i think it is very useful to acknowledge that while i didn't click with a book (for these reasons), someone else might click better. i love reading people's reviews here on DW--but i don't rush right out and read every book a friend liked, or refuse to read a book a friend didn't like--my tastes don't always align perfectly and vice versa. but i am dead sure that there are books that missed for me that you would like and books that missed for you that would work for me--i think a "this book didn't work for me" review is actually helpful, given reasons.

[silveradept]

Line the comments above, I read the statement as someone leaving a review like that in the original author's space as a comment, or directly tagging them in a system that will deliver those words to the author, such that it isn't talking about a thing in your own space. (In certain places, if someone decides to snitch-tag, something not intended to be shown can end up there, and that might have to be a consideration as to whether the thing gets left there or not.) I've gotten people leaving comments on my works that are about how much they didn't like what they were reading or wished it was something else, and for those, I have much the same opinion about nothing given and nothing gained.