Very true. But its opposite, agreement on what constitutes bad writing, has a little more consensus. Clearly, technical lapses such as bad grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc. should not be present in a well written work (unless they are there intentionally for some valid story reason, such portraying the patios of a particular area accurately). Illogical or inconsistent plot developments, lack of an actual story (essays or polemics disguised as fiction), one or two dimensional characters, prose that is cliched or purple, inclusion of ‘facts’ that aren’t, these are all fairly well recognized markers of poor writing. Only in the absence of these items do we have something that might be considered good writing, although such absence certainly doesn’t guarantee that it is ‘good writing’.

But after taking out these fairly readily seen and objective items, what’s left is where subjectivity really holds sway. And of course, my subjectivity says that anything written by Scalzi or Larbalestier is excellent.

Hilarious and energizing.

An example I would cite is the third book in Notre-Dame de Paris, which reads like a 50-page travelogue of 15th century Paris. As fascinating as those chapters may be in their own right, to me they were a bucket of cold water, pulling me out of the story for little more than the author’s indulgence.

Another example that is fresh on my mind, in the series of books I’m currently reading — political diatribes in the middle of the story. I won’t name the author I’m reading at the moment, but let’s just say that I got to a certain book in the series and thought someone had replaced most of the story with Atlas Shrugged. I half expected John Galt to make a cameo at some point. I realize the author may be awash in Randian Objectivism, and I have no problem with him writing an homage to his hero. The problem I have is when he inexplicably drops it in 4500 pages into the overall story and uses it like a club to bludgeon me into submission. It damn near ruined the series for me, and I find myself looking for hidden meaning in the remaining books.

Finally, a pet peeve of mine that also distracts and disrupts, but one that probably isn’t going to go away anytime soon: words that are spelled correctly but are totally incorrect in the context of the sentence. “That” instead of “than”, or “lead” instead of “led”, etc. Or when a character’s name suddenly changes for an instant, as though the author decided to rename someone and missed an occurrence of the original name. I blame it on spell-check software which is less likely to notice such mistakes.

Kind of like Newton (I think?) talking about standing on the shoulders of giants. And now we know that Newton was wrong about A LOT of things, but even so, a lot of what has been discovered since his time, including his wrong-ness, might not have been possible without his ideas.

I’ve been reviewing for about six years now, and I go through phases in terms of the types of reviews I write. When I was starting out, I found it almost impossible to write negative reviews, and if I couldn’t write a positive review, I would avoid reviewing the book. About three years ago, this changed, and I suddenly found it much easier to write negative reviews. Books that I unequivocally liked I avoided reviewing as I found it almost impossible to convey the (usually incredibly subjective) reasons why I adored the book. My opinion at this point is that nobody reacts to a book objectively, and it is dishonest to write a review as if you have reacted objectively.

By all means locate the book in its thematic and stylistic context – this helps readers work out whether it’s the sort of thing they might like reading – but don’t be afraid to state your opinion. Readers have a right to know a reviewer’s opinion of a book, but, more importantly, they have a right to know WHY a reviewer formed that particular opinion. Be subjective, but make your subjectivity explicit. There are a number of things – both thematic and stylistic – that I dislike, and anyone who has read a handful of my reviews can probably figure them out, but I trust that as long as I make the reasons for my dislike of a book explicit, readers are intelligent enough to make up their own minds.

Sorry to get so long-winded, I just love discussing reviewing!

I called my mother a “dirty rat”. I blame television.

Yes, it did! And I couldn’t put it down. I cared about the story and it has stayed with me. I’m so glad I read it.

I personally can not stand a book where dogs die. Even if they just die of old age, it gets me every single time. I’ve been with too many dogs I loved in their final moments and I get so emotional over memories that I lose the book entirely. I can’t even read these books let alone review them. It’s best for everyone involved that I just put the dead dog book aside and back away slowly.

I reviewed this one book, in which the author directly contacted me. We had heaps of emails back and forward, friendly, chatty, before I actually read her book, and once my review was up she went ape on me, emailing me to disagree and argue. She even accused my family of not being loving!

It was completely unprofessional and I can’t believe she did that. I gave it an average review, but I explained and justified all my comments. I just didn’t say “it sucked”.

On that same book, she also sent it to another reviewer: this other reviewer was only 13. She wrote a five line review, saying what it was about and whether it was good or not.

I think age has a lot to do with it as well. If you get older, seasoned reviewers, they are more likely to do a fair, just review rather than younger ones, who’ll write “good/bad”.

or is that a generalization?

regardless, i don’t think it’s in the author’s power to dictate what reviews says/how they said it/get angry for bad reviews!!! (ala alice hoffman/the author in my example)

Though I must confess I do (in a guilty way) enjoy certain bad reviews when they’re really well done. Especially if they’re bad reviews of books I hate. I know. I am bad person.

So I respect any blogger who can write a good bad review. They can state what they didn’t like or what didn’t work for them without getting a smart mouth or rude about it. They also make a point of mentioning what they did like. I actually think its harder to write a review for a book you didn’t like.

I think reviewers should mention their personal quirks if it’s gonna be a factor in the review. I, for example, hate “sperm bandit” books where someone sleeps with a dude in order to get pregnant, and will admit to this if that’s a plot element of the book. Now, maybe the rest of the book will trump my hate (sometimes that has happened, in one case it did not), but I think it’s fair to mention because apparently more people than me LIKE this sort of thing and it would not be something they’d consider bad in a book.

*cough* Yay, someone else hates Mad Men *cough*

I want something objective. I want it to compare this work with other works in several technical aspects.

I couldn’t care less whether the reviewer liked the book.

You and Scalzi are bang on. Stop second-guessing yourselves.

http://cloister27.livejournal.com/45694.html

Not that anybody actually reads my book reviews, but that, too, was a book that I simply couldn’t review objectively because so much of what I loved about it was the enormously personal way that the book’s setting resonated with my own childhood.

At least in my case I wasn’t saying the book sucked (it doesn’t), and I took pains to point out that my opinions were inescapably subjective…

I still want to know how a book communicates what it is trying to achieve. I keep seeing this from authors.