Comments on: BIP #11: The Results

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:46:16 +0000

If only I were smart enough to write a book But I agree — there seems to me so many things you can do to make a blog better and never enough time to do them all. I guess the best we can all do it just keep trying

I agree with you — I enjoy the personal references. Once I know a blogger well (or go through their reviews for books they liked), I feel like I get more solid recommendations of books I will like.

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:44:34 +0000

I try to keep mine down, just because I don’t like super long reviews. But sometimes there is so much I want to say about a book I tend to ramble (plus, being an English major just a year ago, I learned to write about books in essay length chunks!)

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:43:50 +0000

I think everyone wants to write better reviews, and part of why I wanted to do this was so that we could think about what makes a “good” review. I’m not sure it achieved that, but I think it was interesting anyhow.

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:43:08 +0000

Don’t worry about not doing it right now; I’d love to add more reviews to the spreadsheet and run this again sometime later anyway.

I’m glad your computer is back!

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:42:32 +0000

That’s a good point — a lot of reviews have similar elements. It might have been interesting to try and pin down what those elements are (summary, rating, opinion, etc.) and then track how reviews approach those pieces differently.

And about the author’s other work — I’m not sure how I think that would work out, as in, how bloggers versus professionals would approach it.

By: Tom C

Tom C — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:42:57 +0000

I have much appreciated your BIP but need to go back over all your posts to remind myself of all your suggestions (so much to do, so little time). Perhaps you should write a book on improving blogs!

I tend to aim at fairly substantial reviews – averaging about 800 words.

I am pleased that book bloggers use more personal references. That is one of the pleasures of reading a review by a blogger – you tend to get some insight into why the book is important to them, and over time you get to know the reviewer a little.

By: Jodie

Jodie — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:19:10 +0000

Great idea, glad I took part. I think a lot of bloggers (not me but I am trying to scale down a bit) try to keep their word count down.

By: Louise

Louise — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:36:42 +0000

I am sorry I never got around to do this, as I am interested in being able to write better reviews. Not professional since I am not a pro critic, but just better than now, where I basically just give a brief summary w/o spoilers and my own opinion – would be fun with a bit more I think

By: Julia Smith

Julia Smith — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:05:01 +0000

I was just mentioning this challenge to my husband last night. I’ve not been able to do it in the time that it’s come up on your schedule, but I intend to do it before the year is out. I’ve had several roadblocks to doing it – not the least of which was having my computer tower in the shop! – but I would like to see how my book reviews stack up to professional ones. I do know that several authors have used quotes from my reviews on their web sites, so that makes me very happy.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:20:19 +0000

These make sense to me. I don’t think that reviewing can be vastly different. You usually have the same components where you break the book down and give an opinion. I would expect the persona references to exceed those in a professional review. Another interesting thing would be to compare how many professional reviews compare/contrast/mention the author’s other works as compared to bloggers.

Nice job, working with what you had!