Choosing a Good Read

 

I read approximately ten books a month for fun, which does not include the ones I read to research my own books. Granted, those ten books include some middle-grade novels that aren’t as long as adult novels, but it’s still quite a bit. The problem, though, isn’t that I read so many but that I can’t read more. Even though I’m choosy about what goes on my “to read” list, it never seems to shrink and sometimes grows. So how do I ensure that the books on the list are worth the time?

Mostly I take advantage of two tools offered by Amazon and other book sellers: the “look inside” feature and customer reviews.

I generally start with the “look inside” feature to get a feel for the author’s writing style and word use. Sometimes that’s enough to tell me that I don’t want the book on my reading list. For example, if the author consistently uses bad language or throws the heroine into bed in the first few pages, then I know it’s not for me. But my experience has been that many authors wait until they think they have you hooked before they go there, so if I’m still interested after reading those first pages, I put most of my reliance on the reviews.

Reading tastes differ, and I don’t usually find the more glowing reviews to be helpful for books. So although I look at the overall rating (4.1 in the example above), I go straight to the one-or-two star reviews. Among those, I discount the ones that show a general dislike for the author’s style since, as I said, reading tastes differ. Instead I look to see if any of the reviews point out excessive swearing or explicit sex or—perhaps worst of all—bad research. Those reviews tell me that the book would be a waste of my time.

Unfortunately, there are still times when I start reading a book only to discover that it was a mistake, but the “look inside” feature and the customer reviews weed out most of the bad ones.

And I’m grateful for that.