BOOK REVIEWS

I may be on my own with this one. But on the whole I don’t like to read full reviews before reading a book. If it is a new, current book being reviewed I tend to read the first and second paragraph, and the penultimate paragraph, and then if I expect to read the book, put the review aside to read after I’ve read the book.

That said, as my average time for getting to a book, if I haven’t read it within the first six months of purchase, is 12 years, often the review has been binned by then. I read about 4 books I have had for 12 years in the past 18 months!

For novels, I don’t like reviews to give too much of the story away. I may be a re-reader, but the first time I read a novel I like to be surprised by its twists and turns.

After I have read a book though, I love seeing if my feelings are shared by others, what people liked and didn’t, what they picked up that I missed etc. I write reviews more as a means of reminding myself in the future what I felt about the book, and exploring my feelings about it – teasing out ideas that wiggled in my minds eye, and capturing sentences that stood out. A review as a means of recommendation for others I tend to think of as a by-product of the above.

This however applies less for books that might have been totally off my radar, either older books (I read the literary journal ‘Slightly Foxed’– see link under publications) from cover to cover each quarter), or when I am reading the review magazines to generally see what’s out there and come upon a book I may not necessarily have discovered otherwise. Then I will read a review more fully. It also ceases to apply with books like Susan Hill’s ‘Howards End is on the Landing’ a book about her library and reading habits.