I’ve read a few books for which I’m working on reviews, and I’m struggling with something. I want to ask your collective opinions as readers. There are so many series books out now and I’ve been upfront about the fact that series books are difficult for me and my crap-tastic memory unless the world is surprisingly easy to Rhe-Ehnter even if that world mhakhes mhe whant to phuhl ouht my hhaihr sometihmehs. I’ve encountered so … Continue reading Pilot Novels: How to Evaluate→
Entertainment Weekly has a round up of reviews from all over. But I was taken with finding the most snarky element of each one. Two of my faves: The Star-Ledger’s Stephen Whitty: In turning Meyer’s words into images, however, the movie sometimes makes them a bit absurd…. The special effects—with the undead leaping about like something from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Vampire”—are more silly than surreal. The spiky dyed hairdos suggest metrosexual monsters who live not … Continue reading Twilight Reviews→
Here’s a cool charitable opportunity, should you have a serious hankering to tell the world about your favorite pair of shoes. I have to ask what my favorite pair might be… probably Danskos. I’d give up a lot of things, including breakfast and that magic yogurt I love, to spend every day in Danskos. But then, my feet are lesbians. They only tolerate comfortable shoes. However, I can totally write a review that will fund … Continue reading Wanna Write Reviews? For Shoes?→
Someone at the Graph Jam might want to adjust the numbers as to the squeeful hyperbolic 5 star reviews. Klausner alone accounts for at least a 10-12% increase.
From the “Now See Here, Motherfucker, We Work Hard On Those Reviews” department comes word of an eBay store swiping the reviews written by other users on Amazon and review blogs, and posting them on their own book listings under their own name. The EDson Financial Group has posted over 220 reviews on eBay, and according to a few online sources, including Joyfully Reviewed, those beefy reviews were swiped from other sources, usually from among … Continue reading Reviews Swiped for Use on Ebay→
A friendly person from an online book group emailed me with some ire, though not directed at us (always nice!). Seems she’s teed off because earlier last week, the fourteenth installment of the Stephanie Plum series, which hits stores 17 June, had a three-star ranking on BN.com, with a large portion of the 29 individuals who read an advance copy discussing how disappointed they are in the latest Plum installment. But as of Friday, there … Continue reading Disappearing Reviews for Fearless Fourteen on BN.com→
UPDATE: A ha! Silly script does not like apostrophes. So I have rebuilt it without apostrophes and behold, we seem to be working. So, please feel free to cast your vote again. The voting is open until 14 October, so please vote now – and please only vote once. If you’d like a convenient place to read all the reviews again, this page may help. Also, this entry will remain at the top of the … Continue reading Banned Book Reviews - The Voting Begins - AGAIN→
Please don’t forget to send in your Banned Book Review, wherein you review one of the top 100 most challend books from 1990-2000. We’ll vote on the best ones – so be creative – and I promise awesome asskicking prizes. Email your reviews to candy @ smartbitchestrashybooks.com and sarah @ smartbitchestrashybooks.com asap!
One of our readers forwarded on “The Scorn of the Literary Blog” by Adam Kirsch, an article about the future of reviewing and book blogs; given our recent discussions about book reviewing, she thought it’d be an interesting addition to the dialogue. Kirsch does raise some points I’d like to examine further: Yet in the face of the constant shrinkage of newspaper book coverage — as inexorable, it seems, as the melting of the glaciers … Continue reading Litblogs vs. Print Reviews: FIGHT!→
Bitchery reader June forwarded me this email, a message to which I can only say, “Holy Shit.” A friend of hers subscribes to a job offer listserv, and the following message came on by: Write Online Book Reviews We need 5 reviewers for 3 of our newly released titles. We ask that you write a 1-3 Paragraph review with a 5 star rating (5 being best) of each of the 3 books. We will then … Continue reading Reviews For Sale→
Yet again, the question of credibility rears it’s cranky head – credibility for online book reviews, the idea that the buying & reading public would wish to have their opinion known. Egad! Seems John Sutherland is shocked and appalled by the state of book reviewing on the web and has pitched a little fit. He sees independent bloggery and the reviewers therein as “degradation of literary taste.” Then British novelist Susan Hill was banned from … Continue reading Coming Soon: The Smart Bitch Online Reviewer School→
