I tend to veer away from books that receive raving hype. (Confession #1: I don't think much of Harry Potter, Twilight, or Robert Jordan.) The problem I have is that these books are usually handed over with the glowing endorsement of, "I loved it! Everyone else loves it!"
What about that says that I'll love it?
Confession #2: I like bad action/sf movies — you know, the kind that's so bad it becomes hilarious. Don't ask how many times I watched AVP in the theater, or The Chronicles of Riddick on DVD. So sometimes I'll read a scathing film critic's review and, once I'm done laughing (unfortunately, the negative reviews are the funniest and most fun to read), go look up showtimes. Because the very things they heaped scorn upon — a plethora of explosions, a heated romance snatched between fight scenes, sarcastic sidekicks — are characteristics of a movie I'll enjoy watching. For a while I tried to find a critic whose opinion I would be able to reliably count myself on the opposite end from.
The point is that I've trained my friends to recommend things to me not because they've enjoyed them, but because they've triangulated my tastes and decided, in a deliberate manner, that I would like them too. I'm not looking for an objective review, but one with reasoning behind it: "I think you'd like this because..."
When Kristin Nelson recommended Eloisa James's Desperate Duchesses, I paid less attention to her tone and more to the specific points that she thought separated it from other romance novels. And I read it, and loved it.
I've decided to mention some books (and shorter works, too) from time to time on this here blog, but I'll try to focus on what in particular appealed to me, rather than performing a survey of the plot, setting, and characters. These aren't better reviews, or even necessarily reviews, just highlights of certain aspects that might lead one to appreciate the entire story.
This is, of course, once I wend my way through my current stack of nonfiction...
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