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Hi Everyone!

Hope everyone had a good reading week!

This week I finished:

Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race which I'm counting for popsugar's problem facing society, and for ATY's book with an all-text cover. It was really good, and I think an important read. While the history focuses on England, the discussion about race relations applies well to America as well. It was well written, and gave me a lot to think about.

Blackout finished up the Newslfesh series, I really liked it. Counting it for my next book in a series for Popsugar, and a book about science or science fiction for ATY.

No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters - I'd seen this at the library last time I was there, and had skipped it because I already had 3 books and don't like to check out TOO many at the same time for the sake of keeping track of them and such. After her passing last week, I took the opportunity to grab it. It's always bittersweet reading personal writing of someone after they recently pass. She was such a wonderful writer. Doesn't count for anything for pop sugar or ATY, but I'm going to count it as an anthology of essays for Read Harder. She does refer to her blog as a series of essays, so I'm going with it.

Currently I'm reading The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter. I got this for my bookflood, and I'm really enjoying it! I don't think I'd have picked it out for myself, but I'm glad my flooder did :) I'm counting it as my book given to me as a gift.

Continuing on the reviews question from last week, how do reviews affect your reading? Do you check reviews before picking a book up? If you really wanted to read something, would bad reviews change your mind?

For me, it depends on the situation. For an author I know, I'll read a book and not bother to check reviews until later, if at all. For a new book I am not sure if I want to read, I'll skim some reviews, both high and low. Also reviews from people I know are worth more than ones from random strangers. Sometimes if a book is reviews high, but I'm having trouble liking it or getting into it, I'll check the low reviews specifically to see if other people are seeing what I'm seeing.

For example, Beartown has really high reviews. Over in Popsugar people keep raving about it. But I had to DNF it because I really was not enjoying it and I didn't like where it was heading. Prior to for sure DNFing, I checked the low reviews. They were bothered by the same things I was, and checking some of the spoiler tags, I didn't feel like the story went in a direction that would reconcile my feelings about it.

This week I finally read a book - From a Certain Point of View - it's a collection of short stories told from the point of view of minor characters in Star Wars EP IV. It was a little uneven, but I enjoyed it overall.

Reviews do affect my book selection - if a book has negative reviews I'll go dig into them to figure out if it's because the author is not in a traditional category or if there's something in the book I might find hard to deal with/dislike reading.

For January, my new books were Astrophysics For People In a Hurry, The Witch’s Vacuum Cleaner, and Roald Dahl’s Book of Ghost Stories. The last one was disappointingly not scary for me (it’s a collection of stories that he was going to write screenplays of for TV, but the series never happened).
In non-new books, I read As You Wish, Fortunately the Milk, and Cast In Moonlight. I’m currently rereading Cast In Shadows to reacquaint myself with Kaylin and all of Michelle Sagara’s other characters before reading the new Cast In Deception.
(PS � how do you tag a book?)

I'm still reading As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride and still enjoying it immensely. I kind of don't want to read it too quickly because first I'd end up staying up far too late, but also because it would then be over too soon. I'm trying to savor it.

I'm going to keep The Perfect Cookie: Your Ultimate Guide to Foolproof Cookies, Brownies, and Bars for several more weeks because I can renew it several times before I really, really have to bring it back. I want to bake all the things but I have to travel on a business trip for 4 days next week. I bought ingredients for homemade thin mints to make when I return or unless I end up with unexpected free time on Saturday. You'll all get tired of this book every week!

Alexa, above the comment box is a small link that says "add book/author" and then you type in part of the title or author and it will bring up matches. You click "Add" and it puts in the book tag/link into your text.

I still have Year One in the works but it is now behind As You Wish.

Sheri, that is a great question about reviews. Most often, if I read reviews, they're post-reading. I too find that the closer I am to DNF the more likely I am to read reviews and find others who share whatever it is that is not engaging me in a book. Year One is possibly one of those. I'm going to give it more since I put it aside for As You Wish. I also have found that as I get older, I feel far less guilty about DNF. I used to feel it was a requirement to slog through something I'm not enjoying. Now I'm willing to say 'this isn't worth my time'.

I received my #foebookflood this week - Neverwhere, so I'll probably dig into that next. That'll cover Popsugar #17 (received as a gift). I'm still petrified I don't know what to get my own bookworm yet! Off to do some research...

I'm also about halfway through the audiobook of Moby-Dick or, The Whale, thanks to a horrid bit of snowfall in Toronto on Monday, that turned a 7.5 hour drive into a 10+ hour marathon.

Personally, I don't put much stock in reviews of anything artistic/cultural, whether it's movies, books, music, what have you. I'll leave positive reviews for fledgling authors whose books I enjoy, because I'm all about supporting dreams and small business, but that's as far as it goes.

Hello Everyone,

It's so nice to see all the chat on here! I've already filed away a few books for my "to read" list since the year started based on all the conversation.

For audiobooks, this past week, I listened to How to Twist a Dragon's Tale on my daily walking commute. I still love the narration and tone of these for walks, but I was getting a bit tired of stories about boys, so--as some of you may have seen and I think contributed to--I asked the FoEs for suggestions for light, YA books with female protagonists and got a wealth of amazing suggestions, many of which were available to download from my library. So, I've spent the past few days listening to Leviathan (narrated by Alan Cummings!) and I'm really enjoying it. It reminds me a bit of The Golden Compass, which is another favourite of mine.

For physical books, I read Kindred, which finally came available digitally after I had checked out a paper copy of the book, and then I stayed up far too late pretty much inhaling it on my eReader. This book was amazing!!! It fills my Popsugar time travel prompt, and it's about a black woman in 1976 who is repeatedly pulled back in time to the American south in the early 1800s and has to try to keep one of her white, slave owning ancestors alive. I honestly can't say enough about how well I thought this book was written and how powerful it was.

Right now I'm reading Beartown, which is the Popsugar February Challenge read and it's the book about sports prompt. I know Sheri is not a fan of this book for reasons I completely respect, but I have to say that I'm enjoying this book immensely and don't want to put it down. This is a very personal read for me: I come from a small town that is in many ways very similar to the town in this book. I also live in a hockey town that has an excellent junior hockey team and have had the, ahem, "pleasure" of substitute teaching at the high school where they attend and have seen first hand what happens when boys who are not yet young men are in that high pressure "hero" role (and the crap they're allowed to get away with because of it). Last year I read My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by the same author and thought it was pretty good, but I find this book stunning in the observations it makes about small town struggle, pride, hope, and behaviour, as well as the inner narrative of the female character who is looked down on by many of the town people because she's brilliant and wants to have a career where she can be her awesome brilliant self. I know there's some difficult material coming up later in this book, but, at the moment, this book is a real reading highlight for me so far this year.

In response to Sheri's question, I do peruse reviews when I'm thinking about reading a book, but I tend to filter the comments. For example, I read a comment the other day where a person was complaining about how much detail was in the book and so it was boring, but I like detailed descriptions, so that's a plus for me. Besides, I got seriously burned last year when I read a book that was rated 4.3 stars and it was a terrible, typo-ridden, no-continuity piece of banana. I support self-publishing, but this was of the, "did anyone but you read this and give you any kind of feedback or editing before you self-published" kind of piece of banana that even a cursory proof-read would have improved greatly. So yeah, I take the reviews and star-rating with a big grain of salt. Susan, I envy you your DNF attitude! I just can't bring myself to DNF even when I really, really want to! And I promise I won't get tired of hearing about your baking book :-)

Daniele--greetings from London-down-the-road-not-over-the-pond! I saw that a few people received Neverwhere for the #foebookflood! I received mine this week: Written in Red. Urban fantasy is not a genre I normally read, and I'm looking forward to this one as a new genre experience. It's going to be my book received as a gift prompt, too, and I've already put it on my list to read after I get through Beartown and two books set in the civil war era that I wanted to read after Kindred. #Foebookflood FTW!

Hi Stephanie down-the-road-from-my-boyfriend-in-Kitchener! I've filed a bunch of books "to read" in several places: an Amazon wish list, the Excel file I use to track my book challenge, Overdrive, and now here. I try to go through those to check off the challenge categories.

And I think I'm going to be inspired by Sheri and DNF a book I picked up at a book fair. It seemed promising because I had really enjoyed the author's TED talk, but I haven't touched it since the first time I picked it up late last year.

Doing some vacation reading this week! I finally finished reading The Midnight Mayor, the second book in the Matthew Swift series.

Next up was my main go-to vacation reading: Terry Pratchett!!! I've been trying to stretch out the Discworld series as long as I can, but I'm slowly but surely coming to the end and it makes me sad! This week I read Making Money and I Shall Wear Midnight. I can never read just one Pratchett, but three in a row ends up being too many, so I made myself stop.

I've had a ton of holds come in and so I figured I'd just read the ones due first, which has me reading The Library at Mount Char. This is NOT a vacation book to me. It's very dark and grim and gruesome. I almost put it down about 10% percent of the way in, but somehow kept going. We'll see what I think at the end.

I definitely look at reviews for books. Though, like Sheri, I don't bother for authors I know and love. For ones unfamiliar to me I always hunt out the low reviews to see what they say. They tend to be the most informative to me. There's also a couple reviewers that I trust implicitly to guide me to good books and away from the bad.

This week I finished As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, which I mostly liked. It was a pretty fun read, and I am looking forward to watching the movie again now.

I'm still working on Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. I only read a bit at lunch most days, so it goes slower. I still really like it, and this week I learned about the power of "mirroring" - repeating the three or four most important words back to the person you're negotiating with. I'm actually taking a brief hiatus from it because I thought Husbot would benefit so much from it, that I gave my copy to him and bought another one for me!

After finishing As You Wish, I read a bit of Catching Fire in between waiting for a library hold. Now I have The Burning Bridge, the second book in the Ranger's Apprentice series, so I am starting that tonight.

As for reviews, I usually only read them for authors I'm not very familiar with. I find more value in reading what people say, as opposed to stars. When people say that the writing is bad, the plot is boring, or talk about things I just know I'm not interested in or draw parallels to authors I don't like, I will take a pass.

This week I finished The Suspicions of Mr. Whitcher. I enjoyed the audiobook, it was my true crime book for Popsugar and my first time reading that genre. I saw the reviews after I read it, and they are not good. I tend to forget about reading reviews, and in this case it was in my favor. I take more stock in what people I know say than reviews random people or critics write.

I also marathon read The Sorceress. It's the third book in Micael Scott's Alchemyst series. I got the email from my library that it was due in three days, and I hadn't started it yet. Now I am on the waitlist for the fourth.

I also learned today that you can not tag books when on the app. Bummer.

Lynette,

Yeah that's my biggest peeve about the app and the new mobile version of the site. They apparently think that if you are on your phone, you dont' want to tag your books. I had to force my phone to show the desktop version so I could tag them, last time I posted from the phone.

That and not allowing nested comment threads.

Hello! This was a week of starts and stops for me....

I started As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, but this ended up being a DNF.... The Princess Bride was never a favorite of mine - I remember watching the movie a couple times growing up, but it never captured my imagination. Prior to starting the book I watched the movie again and enjoyed it a lot! The book, however, wasn't interesting to me. After struggling through 70 pages I gave up.

I also started Outlander in e-book form. Maybe on an e-ink reader it would be OK, but trying such a long book on my phone was just disappointing - so much reading and swiping and so little progress. I got about 70 pages into this one as well and then decided I would rather read it hard copy. I'll come back to this later.

Next up is Redshirts in hard copy and Caraval in e-book.

I generally don't read reviews of books that I'm reading, even when I'm done with it. Maybe I'll look at the overall number of stars, but that's as far as it goes. If a book sounds interesting to me, then it gets a chance. It might be a book that I love and someone else hates or vice versa; or someone else's bad review might taint my enjoyment of it. So if I read it without looking at reviews, then I can enjoy the experience.

I know I said I was savoring As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride two days ago, but I ended up staying up an extra hour last night to finish it! I am strongly suggesting my husband read it while I'm gone on a business trip the next 4 days. Then we'll rewatch the movie together.

I am taking his copy of Artemis with me. It has been in my stack since he finished in one day, right after Christmas. I hope I don't crack it open until I finish writing my presentation on the train tomorrow! That will be an exercise in willpower! Guess which one I'd rather do!

Yes, Year One gets pushed down the queue again. Good thing I've got renewals on that.

Susan, I thought Artemis was pretty good. Hope you enjoy!

This was a busy week at work, and I had a lot of random stuff cut into my reading time at home. Because of all that, I was only able to finish one book, and put a tiny dent in a couple of others. My finish was As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride. I enjoy the movie and I generally enjoyed the book, but it's certainly one of the thinner hollywood memoirs I've read, and felt a little too light and fluffy for my taste. That said, I did like learning about all the preparation and work that went into the swordfighting. I had no idea there were no stunt doubles and that the actual moves were so specialized and specific. Kudos to everyone for some seriously hard work there!

I'm still plodding through Inkheart. I have no idea why this book was a bestseller. I keep reading to see if it'll get better, but so far nothing in particular has happened. The characters keep discussing all the great stuff in the story-in-the-story, Inkheart, but all we get is the "real world" story. Yawn. I can't believe I'm almost 3/4 through and almost nothing has happened yet. So. Many. Pages.

I also started Blackbirds. This is my first Wendig book despite reading his blog for years. So far, I like it. It's not amazing, but it's definitely holding my attention, and I like some of the writer's tricks he's using. I usually don't like horror, but I guess all those years of watching Supernatural has toughened me up a bit :)

Since last posting on this thread, I

1. Finished the book I was planning to DNF. I'm glad I did, so that throws cold water over my resolution to boldly quit books.

2. Started reading reviews, *after* I'd finished a book. I'm a Ravenclaw through and through, and you'd think I was reading cheap romance novels (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not my scene) from the sheer volume of condescending reviews. Methinks I'm going to go back to not reading them at all LOL