Tiff’s Book Review Criteria
Hello dear reader!
I set a goal to read 12 books this year, at least one a month, and so far I’m on track. I figured I might as well start reviewing some of these in more depth on the blog.
I used to be a voracious reader. I always had my nose buried in a book. Then college happened. Then work happened. I had to, and still have to, read so many scientific articles and textbooks and the like that reading just became not fun. So I stopped reading for several years, except when I was on vacation or in random bouts here and there. I’m trying to get back into reading more for enjoyment. Especially now that I’m writing. Reading helps with my own writing a ton.
“But Tiff! Why not just listen to audiobooks?” You say. I’m a highly visual and kinesthetic person and I have a very hard time retaining information or following along with audiobooks. My husband is the king of audiobooks. He averaged a book a week last year. As for me, I really struggle.
So if I’m going to take the time to sit down and read a book, it needs to be good and I want it to be worth my time. I tend to read reviews to get a good idea if I will like the book, but I try to stay away from spoilers because I like to be surprised. Reviews here on my blog MAY contain spoilers, although I will try not to reveal too much. You’ve been warned.
I post non-spoiler book reviews on Amazon and GoodReads.
Posting a review or at the very least a rating really helps authors out a ton.
Now, I want to briefly talk about things that I love in a book:
Great story/plot that has unpredictable turns.
Unlikely heroes/heroines, this could be an underdog or just someone we didn’t expect to be suited to saving the world.
Dragons are always a win, but I tend to be nit-picky about how they’re written.
I absolutely love ancient civilizations that vanished under mysterious circumstances, ancient gods and religions, as well.
Similarly to the above point, I like ancient magic and/or tech. As Arthur C. Clarke once wrote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.
I’m a hopeless romantic at heart. I love where there is a dash of romance thrown in.
I like a good mix of action and downtime in a book in which we can get to know characters a little better.
Real consequences for actions.
Most things in the fiction/fantasy genre make me pretty happy.
If we look at some of my favorite books, movies, and video games, we’ll start to notice a trend.
The Hobbit
The Last Unicorn
The Dark Angel Trilogy
The Labyrinth
Princess Mononoke
The Matrix
Breath of Fire III
Final Fantasy VII
Soul Reaver
These are just a couple, but once you start pulling elements out of those stories, you can see there is a decent amount of overlap.
A few other things to keep in mind is that there are things that may upset other readers that are not deal breakers for me:
Most things that would fall under content warnings I do not shy away from. Stories that contain violence, are sexually explicit and/or sexually violent, include self-harm or thoughts of suicide, graphic details of bodily fluids, hate speech and so on will not stop me from reading it. I would like to point out that just because a story contains these does not mean I endorse them. Life is ugly and messy and cruel at times. I’ve personally dealt with a lot of things that would fall under content warnings: I’ve been bullied, stalked, sexually assaulted, struggled with depression and thoughts of suicide, and harmed myself. This is obviously an incredibly complicated and nuanced topic and my intent is not to treat it lightly. My belief is that if these things are included they can be done to help the writer (and possibly the reader) overcome their own trauma. It can also be done to help show people who may never have considered it how wretched and devastating things like hate speech are. It can be included to help someone who has never struggled with depression understand what their friend or family member may be dealing with and give them new perspective and insight. I think these things can be included with great benefit, it all depends on how you use them. I mainly bring this up to say that including content warnings in my review will generally not be at the forefront of my review process.
Things I generally don’t enjoy:
Horror, especially that involving ghosts and/or possessions. I get nightmares super easily. I like to sleep, not lay awake at night listening to every sound in the house utterly terrified. So I just do myself a favor and pass.
Non-Fiction. I read too much of this for work, and I struggle to pay attention to get through non-fiction books as it is. But I will happily watch a documentary or any learning show any day of the week.
Mystery novels. I had a unit way back in grade school where we had a competition to see who could read the most mystery novels. Safe to say that I won by a landslide, but I completely burned myself out on the genre and have never been back since.
Now that I have that established, I’m going to start doing some more detailed reviews of books here on the blog. One of the really awesome things about the Blacksteel Press team is that we all have very different tastes. Phil likes horror. I do not. Dustin likes things that get down in the weeds in terms of historical accuracy and he enjoys science fiction more than I do. Hopefully, I can convince them to do some book reviews on here as well in case your tastes are different than mine.
Till next time dear reader, leave me some good recommendations in the comments below! <3 Tiff
Tiff’s Lobster Rating Scale:
🦞🦞🦞🦞🦞 - A GREAT book, couldn’t put it down, still thinking about it after I’ve finished it, would read again, hit a lot of my ‘book sweet spots’.
🦞🦞🦞🦞 - A REALLY GOOD book, I genuinely enjoyed it.
🦞🦞🦞 - A GOOD book, not bad, but it didn’t leave me wanting more either.
🦞🦞 - Meh, JUST OK. I had serious problems with this book and did not enjoy it. I maybe didn’t finish it.
🦞 - This book was deplorable, and probably contained some highly inappropriate or questionable content.
