Do Not Read If You Are Easily Offended

So, here I sit at 10:25 PM, trying to come up with something new and controversial. Something that will offend people and make them write letters to the editor. or at least Sariah. I want to post something that will get all the people who hate people with children angry, like one of Julie’s blogs did. Or maybe I can rile up all the Book of Mormon historians that disagree with my sheep philosophy like Sariah. Rob just looks controversial. Stephanie lives where it doesn’t snow. And Kerry is so sweet all the time, that you just know she says mean things about you behind your back.

But I’ve got nothing. Maybe it’s because I spent the evening swimming, eating an amazing roast beef dinner, and playing cards at my parents' house. It’s just mellowed me out. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been answering like a hundred questions a day for my blog tour. As it is, I’ve spent most of my best ammunition. Why I think authors shouldn’t use prologues. My anti-SASE campaign. Why I hate flashbacks. It’s all out there already.

Anyone want to talk about how Vai Sikahema, a 45 year-old 5’9” ex BYU football player out-boxed the steroid using ex-major league baseball player Jose Canseco, knocking him down twice in the first round before the fight was stopped? Especially gratifying when it was Canseco that asked for the fight in the first place.

No? Okay, then how about book reviews, or any reviews for that matter? How realistic are they? And how useful? As a sales manager I am supposed to do annual reviews of my employees. I hate the 1-5 star process. It’s inherently flawed. You don’t want to give your employee five stars because that means they have no room for improvement. But anything less than 3 stars says, “You really don’t deserve to be working here.” So really you are choosing between 3 and 4 stars.

Is that the case with book reviews? If you give out 5 star reviews too easily, you lose credibility. But if you give any less than 3, it’s a pretty terrible review. Go look at the Amazon reviews of a popular book. The 5 star reviews are not all that helpful because obviously anyone who gave it five stars loved it so much they can’t find much of anything wrong. On the other hand, the 1 star people are so filled with hatred, you have to wonder if the author shot their dog or something.

So you go to the 3 and 4 star reviews to get the real scoop. What’s good, what’s not? But that takes us back to the issue of really just being a 2 star difference. Thus we introduce ½ stars. Or a 1-10 scale. Or some people have gone completely away from stars to descriptions. Liked it. Loved it. It was okay. I’d never read it again. I burned it and spread the ashes across the lawn of my meanest neighbor. That kind of thing.

So here are my questions—which are not nearly as controversial as the whole King Noah man or myth thing:

How do you rank a book when you review it?

What do you look for in a review, and how much credibility do you give it?

And lastly, what do you think Rob is really hiding behind all those fake interviews?