Book Blogger Hop: Negative Reviews?

This prompt was submitted by Heather @ MM Romance Reviewed:

Do you post negative reviews?*

* I don’t see 99% of what I post about books here as a “review.” I still see Reviews as something that a professional does, in a professional manner. I’m an amateur who writes in a very casual manner. But I know I’m pretty much alone in this point of view, so for the sake of this post, I’ll use the commonly accepted usage.

There are books that are bad. Those need to be recognized as such. There are books that don’t appeal to a reader for whatever reason. Those should be acknowledged and discussed—hopefully with an eye to the positive as well as the negative. It’s okay not to like things. I personally think it’s a little strange how much some people enjoy not liking things, but that’s not for me to judge. I tend to prefer liking books, life is more enjoyable that way. But sometimes I just can’t. And that’s good. That’s the way it ought to be in this world of differences.

If I invest the time to read something, then you’d better believe I’m going to write about it—I need stuff to write about to keep this thing going.

Less pragmatically, I write to help me think about a book–and if those thoughts end up in a negative place, then I’m going to write a negative post.

But more importantly, if readers of my posts are to take me seriously when I say, “I think this is good,” or “I recommend it.” They should know that there are things I don’t think are good, things I don’t recommend. It’s easier to gauge how much weight to give a positive take on a book when you know how they react dimly to something.

Sure, I get that some bloggers don’t want to do anything negative—either because they’re inherently or deliberately encouraging, they think there’s too much negativity in the world already, or they’re firmly in the “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” camp.* I get it, I understand it, and support their decision. Still, when deciding if I’m going to read a book I’m on the fence on, they’re not likely to sway me.

* Back on my personal blog years before I started this one, I posted a response to the Spider-Man “One More Day” storyline that consisted of 3 pages of line breaks to make it very clear how much there was that I couldn’t say anything about. Sticking to the letter of the law, but trashing the spirit.

And, as almost always comes up in a discussion like this—sometimes someone will read a negative post that I or someone else writes and say, “I can see where they might not like X, but it sounds interesting to me.” I know I’ve read books that other bloggers have trashed because of something they said.

Do you promote those reviews if you post?

I’m not sure that I promote posts at all—I know I ignore Facebook’s repeated suggestions to pay for promotion. Do I share them on social media sites? Sure–I tweet the links and post them on Facebook. I post the reviews to Goodreads, StoryGraph, Hardcover, LibraryThing, and whatever other bookish sites I’m using/trying. If that counts as promotion, then yes I do. Why wouldn’t I?

What about you?