do you review every book you read?

Tuesday, June 3, 2014 |
I had a number of interesting conversations last week with fellow bloggers at the BEA Bloggers Conference and Book Expo America. One of the topics we covered popped into my head again while I was at work today. I thought I'd pose it to you (my readers who are also bloggers): What percentage of books read do you review?

@celialarsen tweet

Since I couldn't open a Word document and write a post then and there, I took to social media.  I got a lot of interesting responses, varying from right around where I am to 100%, but it seemed as though most of the replies were grouped toward the high end. Please feel free to share your own estimate in the comments! I'd love to know if it's abnormally skewed due to the active twitter audience on a given Tuesday morning (or any other plausible factor!).

Now for the confessional portion of this post. The reason my percentage is so low? Is because around half of the books I read are romance novels.  And I generally do not review or record them in any way (you won't see them populating my Goodreads shelves, for instance). There's always the off chance that my mother or grandmother will read my blog, after all!

Lest you think I am *afraid* of my family knowing I read romance, I'm not. Well, not much. It is more that I have little desire to have a conversation about the romances I read, and especially not 'in public.' That is not the case at all with middle grade and young adult literature. When I read a fantastic YA book, I want to shout it from the rooftops. So, if we redefine the original question, I'd say I review about 90% of the young adult and middle grade lit I read.

The rest of my reading pie is taken up with slices of adult fiction and adult science fiction and fantasy.

So, please do tell: what does your read-to-reviewed ratio look like?

p.s. In case you also read romance and haven't discovered them, two romance-reviewing blogs I trust implicitly are Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and Dear Author. They do a much better job of recommending romance than I ever could/would.

14 comments:

Tanya Patrice said...

I do discuss every book I read and that's because of course, that's how I like it :-) For me, my blog's main focus is to record and share the books I read, so I talk about them all.

Tales of Whimsy said...

What an awesome question. I use to be 100%. Now I'm more like 75%. But I often feel guilty that my percentage isn't higher. Especially when years later I need a reminder about a book.

BTW, I get not reviewing romances. I don't often feel the pull to review those either.

So are we talking sexy ones? or more chick lit stuff?

Cecelia said...

Juju: On romances - it really depends on my mood. I used to have quite a passion for the tame-ish Harlequin Romance and Medical Romance lines (and I love a good one-kiss-and-that's-the-end Betty Neels book!), but I also like Regency/steampunk/werewolf romances, which run the gamut of... earthiness. I don't do straight erotica, though.

Ryan said...

Up to this year, I reviewed everything. My problem is that I have read over 400 gay romance novels since late Dec., so there is no way I will ever catch up to them all. I do occasionally pick one at random, and write a review. I do review everything else though.

April (BooksandWine) said...

Mine is pretty much around 100%, because to me reviewing helps me remember the book, and I don't know I just really like reviewing everything I read ha ha.

Interesting food for thought!

Alex said...

Since I am on a book committee and we read a lot of kids books, I could never blog about all of them. Plus there are adult books I like to read and which I almost never review. So I am guessing my review percentage is 30% reviewed to 70% not.
What an interesting question. I hadn't really thought about it before.

Unknown said...

Interesting post....I read a lot, but I have only just started my blog. So will have to get back to you on how many books I review.

I don't read a lot of adult romance novels though!

Liviania said...

I would say maybe 50% nowadays, but that's because I am reviewing more per week and reading less with a full-time job. Before it was probably more like 25%.

Anonymous said...

Love this question!

I'm at 85-90% in any given moment because I review all of the fiction I read eventually (4 review backlog right now) and what I post is all I read. BUT I also read (and count) picture books which I rarely review because they feel like more work for some reason.

Ruby Scarlett said...

I no longer blog much these days but I do record everything I read on Goodreads and I write a few words about each book there. The exception this year so far has been New Moon (of the Twilight saga) to which I gave no stars and about which I didn't write anything as I don't want to have to explain my thoughts about the third three Twilight books in general, I don't want to have to justify myself.

Jenny @ Reading the End said...

Mine's probably something like 70%, I think. I don't review most of the nonfiction I read, and I don't post about rereads (typically). I also don't review romance novels as a rule, though if one strikes me as particularly good I'll sometimes do a post on it.

Kristen M. said...

My percentage was 100% for the first probably 4 years of my blog. But then when I let go of the ridiculous expectations of myself and decided to take a more relaxed approach to the blog, that dropped. I'm not sure what it would be now, still probably up around 85-90%, but if I don't want to write about a book, I just don't. Everything is in my spreadsheet and I put brief notes there.
I can see why you don't review all of your "fluff" reads. I'm not sure what you would say about them anyway. I guess you could do mentions but if you don't want mom and grandma seeing them, then there's not much point! And the nice thing about blogs is that we are all free to run them however we want, right? :)

Unknown said...

Mine is probably at about 90%. I star everything on Goodreads, but there are just some books that I just leave alone when it comes to reviews.

Leslie @ This is the Refrain said...

I usually only post about a book individually if I feel like I really have something to add to the conversation about it - which is probably about half the time? And that's only when I'm consistently reviewing! Which hasn't been every year I've been blogging.

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