An Announcement and A Few Words about Goodreads Reviews

So I have decided on a little experiment: I am going to start posting my more ambitious Goodreads reviews here. Up until now, I have almost always written reviews specifically for the blog, which makes sense. As I recently discovered after I decided to repost my favorite reviews on Amazon, Goodreads reviews do not always translate well to other venues.

There are a couple of reasons for this. Goodreads is first and foremost a social networking site, and the reviews reflect that. They are not impersonal descriptions of a product, but instead are often written with specific friends or fellow fans in mind. The tone of the site encourages creativity and the development of a memorable, idiosyncratic reviewing style. Inside jokes and references to ongoing discussions are common. Reviewers can assume that their core group of readers will be familiar with certain key texts that they can refer to casually for comparison.

When read out of context, the reviews can seem eccentric or off-topic.  In an ideal world I would just rewrite them for the blog, but the reality is that will almost never feel like the best use of my writing time. I want to post them here because I devote a lot of time and thought to reviewing the books I most admire, and I think part of the purpose of the blog should be to let people know these amazing books are out there.

So that about sums up my announcement. The upside is that this will enable me to post more regularly on the blog. Now I just have to steel myself to people outside of Goodreads finding out about the truly crazy shit I read.