I have realized over and over again in my life how powerful words can be. I use this realization to encourage myself to read as much as I can in my spare time. And I don’t have a lot of free time. But I have challenged myself to read two books a month this year. To some this may seem like a lot of books, but to look at the span of intriguing summaries that cross my path , 24 books in a year is a small feat*.
This discovery led to another. This next discovery was slightly more disheartening. I discovered I don’t know a single person, blogger, reviewer, or author who tells me what I would like to know about potential reads. There are reviewers who just state a synopsis and how much they enjoyed the read, and there are reviewers that ruin the story by giving away the juiciest bits, most annoyingly there are reviewers who only offer a English Literature analysis of how the author’s writing does not compare to Dante or Hemingway or whoever their professors tell them is the MOST PROLIFIC WRITER EVER. Also a friend of mine mentioned a growing catastrophe - book reviews by people who have not read the book yet, they just like the summery or the cover art – these make me feel a little violent.
So as great minds say, if you want something that hasn’t been invented you must create it yourself. I will be submitting reviews that include the things I wish I saw in reviews:
What it’s all about (Summery) PLUS
1. Type of story
2. Quality of writing
3. Imagery (Does the author make the world real)
4. Story Worth (And who should read it)
Hopefully someone will find this helpful and help them discover some great stories or ignore some less than hot ones.
*Yet I guarantee I didn’t finish that many titles last year.
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