Book Queries & Curiosities

'Book Street' crop, 2022

Some book things I would like to discuss for no reason other than I had them in my head and needs to get them out.

01 | Should you judge a book by its bad reviews? — I think reviews can be a bit bias such when a person loves a book, they will most likely say good things about the book while a person who hates a book will most likely say negative things about the book. But if a book have hundreds of the same negative reviews, I can't completely ignore it. I do try giving books a chance even if there are bad reviews but sometimes these negative reviews are so accurate in assessing a book that I can't help but agree with them. Sometimes I really could not understand why people like a certain book but I believe every book has an audience even books that I don't have a taste for.

02 | Is linking to Goodreads a good thing or a bad thing?  —  Whenever I talk about a book (usually in my monthly book wrapup), I would link to a Goodreads book page so that I wouldn't have to write the synopsis because I suck at explaining what a book is about. I can link to any online book seller but that means having to choose which one and I don't want to choose but maybe when I link to goodreads, I sort of choose amazon by default. (If you don't know goodreads is a place to track your books and share what you're reading, according to the website here. I honestly only use it for book synopsis.)
    For book info, goodreads is pretty decent in terms of book synopsis (this is usually the same as amazon but sometimes it has the more recent, corrected version than amazon), reviews and links to purchase the book. So maybe goodreads seems a bit bias toward amazon since their link is more apparent and is usually first on the list on the list of sellers. Let's say amazon is very present through the site. (Amazon owns goodreads.) Sometimes I link to an amazon book page because there is no goodreads page or I didn't find one.
    In the Reader Q&A section, sometimes the questions never get answers even after years of being asked which makes me wonder who is responsible for answering those questions - authors or readers?
    I always found goodreads a bit unhelpful in that there are more than one listing for a single book. Yes, there are different editions to a single book but it's more helpful if they are under one listing. I'm also annoyed that the search button on the home page is at the bottom so I bookmarked my goodreads page to the children's category so that the search box is at the top.
    It would be nice to link to an author's website because it's their book and they should have better info about their books right? I wouldn't answer yes to this. But maybe I haven't seen enough author's websites to judge but I have seen enough sites that have very little info about the books, instead, they have links to book sellers because an author's websites is more or less a place to promote books and less of a place for hanging out or even get a book excerpt. I'll only link to an author's website if they have features that aren't available elsewhere or if I find the website offers a lot of information about the books.
    I would prefer not to make any links at all but then readers won't be able to know much about the books I talk about. So maybe I haven't looked hard to find an unbiased book place for book info but I think goodreads isn't bad but perhaps it needs a little improvement here and there. (I should mention I no longer have a goodreads account so I may not be accurate on some things here.)

03 | Should you judge a book by its sample? — If you read a lot of ebooks like I do, you might also read a lot of book samples. The samples usually consisted of a cover, some credits/publishing info, content listing, and a couple of chapters (usually the beginning of the book) but sometimes the sample has all these things except no chapters (and yes, there are book samples that does not offer any writing samples of the book which I thought is stupid because reading the content list does not make me want to read a book).
    It's not just synopsis that makes me want to read a book. Reading a sample of a book helps me decide as well. If a book sample has bad writing or writing style that irritates me or in one case, talks about something that annoyed me, then I wouldn't read the book. (For example, there was a book that starts with talks about the bowel movement of the main character which she seems to be discussing with her friend, not a doctor, her friend. Why would you start a book with such things? I decided to never read that book). I have read a lot of great samples that turned out to be disappointing books and I have also read a lot of mediocre samples but they turned out to be great reads so samples don't always help in judging how a book will turn out but at least, it's not a complete waste of time.

What about you? Do you judge a book by its bad reviews? Do you use goodreads or link to it when you talk about a book? Should you judge a book by the samples you read?