This week’s BTT question:  

How much do reviews (good and bad) affect your choice of reading? If you see a bad review of a book you wanted to read, do you still read it? If you see a good review of a book you’re sure you won’t like, do you change your mind and give the book a try?

Hmm…this almost goes back to the question: How did you come across your favorite author/book? To me, this is mostly through passionate recommendations. The good “reviews” that people give a book encourage me to go buy it. For example, I’ve bought Moloka’i and my book club chose it for their next book to read. Part of the reason that I wanted to read it is because it got a good review here, and on Amazon it has 5 out of 5 stars out of 86 reviews!  On the flip side, if I say I’ve picked up a book and someone bags on the book, then I go at it with a skewed opinion, rather than no opinion.

And then there’s my I Don’t Want To Read Non-Fiction And You Can’t Make Me No Matter How Good It Is attitude. I don’t know where I got this attitude; perhaps I picked it up around the same time that I decided I didn’t like tomatoes. I was four years old and my dad made me eat some tomatoes. I gagged on the first bite. He never made me eat tomatoes again.

I went against my rule a while ago (two years?) and started Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King. I started the book, got 80 pages into it, and finally put it away in favor of fiction. I was fascinated by the story, but it didn’t hold my interest long enough.

So how about you??