Do you trust book reviews?

[beccagreen]

I find book reviews to be both a good thing and a bad thing. Since almost all of us can do a review now it's sometimes hard to determine which reviews are legit and which aren't.

I personally check on the ratings first and then I read individual reviews but for the most part if a book is rated 3 stars below I pretty much skip it altogether.

[wayzteacher]

For me, it depends on the reviewer.

I don't really put a lot of stock on paid reviews or reviews made by professional reviewers.  I don't know.  I just don't trust their opinion.  :wacky:

However, I have many online reader friends in sites like Goodreads whose reviews I pay attention.  I usually trust the reviews of readers who share the same taste of books with me. 

[Baburra]

I'd trust them only if there were enough reviews for me to gain enough of an objective idea of how a sample number of people would view the piece. If the number of reviews were too small then I would be inclined to think it to be one sided and biased, but with enough reviewers I could see good arguments from both sides enough to discern for myself if the book were worth checking out or not.

[deathbyprayer]

Depends on the site I'm checking it out. I usually listen to books rather than read them and the site where I get all my books is pretty legitimate when it comes to reviews and ratings from users since it's a paid service and you can be sure that every person who gave it a review and a rating is honest because it's what they're money told them.

[chigreyofthenorns]

Not always! Unlike movies, people's perceptions on books vary greatly. So, I consider book reviews, but I don't really depend on them when it comes to deciding if I want to buy books or not.

[TheJamal]

Sometimes, but it depends on the reviewer. I often don't look for book reviews before buying it, but I'll certainly take recommendations from family/friends/teacher on what some good reads would be. I know what I like and generally the back of the book description will give me enough to know if I'll like the book or not.

I do end up reading some bad books or ones I didn't enjoy, but I still like reading and I hopefully still learned something out of the reading as well. Very few times has a book been, "Wow, I got nothing out of that book" for me.

[Trellum]

I don't trust reviews, I know some reviews are legit, but even if they are legit I'd not trust someone who has different tastes from mine to tell me x book is good because y reason, bleh bleh.  I always try to check the book before buying it, possibly read a few pages before or at least browse the whole book.  I don't trust the judgment of others, because well, everyone has a different definition of what is good, we all have different standards!

Plus a lot reviews are done by people who haven't even read the book.  Some people get paid to make reviews. Yup, even products ones, so writing a book review wouldn't be such a weird thing for someone getting paid for that, even if she didn't read the book, but can gather come info online.

[Muthoni]

I believe that a review is a personal opinion of someone. There is a reason why one man’s meat could be another man's poison. Besides, a number of authors and publishers can hire people to give a good review of their books. The only way to know is by reading the book. Remember to give it an honest review after you are done reading.

[tar_toei]

I check on the ratings rather than the review. It sometimes affects me whenever I see a bad review on a certain book I want to read but substantially, I'd stick on the ratings than the review since reviews are personal opinions of a person with a different interest which I don't know of.

[NATASHA]

I find book reviews are the opinion of someone else and their idea of what good reading is might not be the same as yours. I always think it is best for you to read the synopsis or summary of the book so that you can see for yourself if you would enjoy it or not.

[g2narat]

It depends on the reviewer. It might sound weird, but I usually don't trust reviewers who sound too formal. I feel like they're usually being pretentious and just want to show other people how much they know about a certain book and the hidden meanings, etc. I prefer reading reviews of people who just mention whether they liked a particular book or not and why.

[calebmelvern]

Not at all. I almost never read book reviews at all, especially from those big review sites. I'm not the kind of reader who picks out all the little details and criticizes them. But that's exactly what they do in book reviews and that's just not my thing.