Many readers know and love the website Goodreads, the online tool allows for readers to keep track of which books they have read or would like to read. Goodreads was established in 2007 by Otis and Elizabeth Chandler. The website has a feature that allows anyone with an account to leave a review on a book. There are a couple of good aspects to this but just as most things go there are also negative aspects to the review option. Many simply use the feature once they have completed a novel to write their thoughts about it, reviews pile on plenty of different series and books including someone's positive, negative, or neutral thoughts on a book. The thing is though, if someone has strong opinions that are biased based on components such as lack of understanding, influence from others, or even just missing a key detail that adds to the storyline, can cause for the reviews to not be 100% accurate.
In general society can deem a book good even when some disagree, which can lead to someone looking for a new read to be influenced into reading a book with the opinions of others and not their own. Some of the people deeming these books as good or bad can also be uneducated and lack the important knowledge/information needed to truly understand the book. A prime example could be people who have read something from school, or a parent made them read the book for educational purposes; both of which can cause someone to not enjoy the book as much as what a book of choice could have been enjoyed. With these examples, someone’s lack of enjoyment could simplify down to negative reviews on a book that might be really good.
Another thing about reviews is the open space to express emotion and thought, there have been times where I’ll see a series of reviews from Goodreads where someone is being humorous in their review yet still express their thoughts of the book. The free range of words that can be used in a review welcomes people to advise other readers of what to look forward to or even look out for in a story. The process of leaving reviews initiates connections from people in different places to share something that they value with others. That is my take on Goodreads reviews, this might not be true for everyone but in general the ideas of reviews are great when they are unbiased.
(Bonus if you want! Here's a link to Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/)
-Chloe B.🦆
I actually love unhinged goodreads reviews, they're entirely useless but make for a good laugh. As for you take though, I completely agree that they can be really useful but the bias is often pretty apparent.
ReplyDeleteI've been a fan of goodreads since I learned about its existence. I completely agree about your opinion on the fact that the reviews can be entirely useless to someone trying to figure out if they should read the book or not, but the reviews have certainly given me a good laugh or two! Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteNice post! I am definitely a reader that loves using goodreads to track my reading. While like you said, reviews can have biases or be pointless, I still find them entertaining to read. I think as long as you don’t always take reviews at face value the goodreads review system can be useful and entertaining.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't use good reads their reviews seem really interesting. I always get a good laugh out of amazon reviews. I have to check this out some time. Nice post.
ReplyDeleteI never heard about a website called goodreads, but it doesn't sounds like a bad place to find a book that can be interested and even more if other readers can also comment on it.
ReplyDeleteI really like how your post is meta in a way (making a review of Goodreads which is a book review website). I also agree that the some reviews on there aren't written with a full understanding of the book, so they may mislead other readers. Great job on this post Chloe!!
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