|
> The average reader there doesn't really have good taste in books. Massive problem everywhere. Sometimes I'll read some well-reviewed book-club sort of book, and it's usually somewhere between middling, and really bad. I once encountered one of those from a major publisher and aside from not being very good to begin with, it didn't even seem to have had a test-read done before it went to print—there were multiple parts, and one egregious chapter, where it looked like the author had done a major re-organizing edit then never gone back to iron out the wrinkles, such that the text would contradict itself line-to-line, like two or three versions of a scene describing different action, sequence of events, and circumstances re: things like which characters were present, had been hastily mashed up then never fully reconciled. This was plainly not a some intentionally-ambiguous literary device, but an oversight that left the reader unable to know what was supposed to have occurred. You'd never know what a mediocre story and technical mess it was from reading online reviews, though, unless you dug deep into the one- and two-star stuff (and found a reviewer of that sort who hadn't DNF'd it after the first couple chapters), plus other people I know who read it didn't even notice—one did, and we both got to stop feeling like we were taking crazy pills when we compared notes. WTF. All I can figure is a lot of people just skim everything, so are used to filling in lots of narrative gaps in their head or accepting the gist or outcomes of bits that don't make much sense to them and moving on, which would also explain why the quality of the story, characters, and writing aren't something they really notice, if it's all coming through to them rather impressionistically anyway and they're painting the rest of the picture any way they like. I dunno. TL;DR I find book recommendations nearly useless unless I've got a good sense of how a reviewer's quality-o-meter is calibrated. Star ratings from a broad, general audience are entirely useless. |