Reading in Public No. 33: How I keep reviews from tainting my reading experiences

Strategies and mindsets to keep others' opinions in check

One of the most frustrating things about being a public reader is sharing a book I’m excited to read and being bombarded with commenters telling me how much they hated that particular book. I really enjoy a back-and-forth with readers when we have differing opinions on a book, but it can really tank a reading experience when you’re hit with negativity before you even open the book.

Recently, when I asked on Instagram for reading conundrums to weigh in on, I received this fantastic question: How do you keep others’ reviews from affecting your feelings about a book as you read?

I love this question because it’s something I too have struggled with and it’s part of my constant struggle with having too much information about a book going into it. Before bookish social media, I didn’t contend with too many opinions influencing my own reading. Now it’s almost impossible for me to go into a book without knowing what other readers think about it—at least if I want to read the most buzzed about new releases.

Today I’m sharing some strategies and mindsets for keeping other people’s reviews from impacting my own reading—and how I engage with the reviews of others in a fulfilling way.

7 Strategies to Keep Reviews from Affecting My Reading

1. I actively avoid professional reviews, Goodreads, and Storygraph before I start a book. Ok this seems obvious. If I’m trying not to let reviews impact my reading, I should avoid reviews right? Sure. But I know this can become a challenge for those of us deciding what to read from amongst the dozens of fantastic looking books releasing each year, not to mention the backlist books we’ve been meaning to read forever. When I’m trying to prioritize my reading without getting too much information from reviews, I focus on a few trustworthy sources. I tend to look to see if the book received a “starred review” (literally just a little star icon) from either Publishers Weekly or (my gold standard) Kirkus Reviews. I’ll also check out the overall review consensus on Book Marks, which notes how many rave, positive, mixed, and panned reviews a book has. Sure, all of this data gives me some sense about how the book is being widely received, but it allows me to avoid details about how the book is being interpreted. Of course, the big flaw in this plan (for me) is Instagram. There, I try not to fully read reviews of books before I’ve read them, with the exception of a few trusted sources. This can be hard! But if I see a review of a book I’m interested in, I’ll save it and return to it after I’ve finished the book or am partway through it.

2. I seek out professional reviews midway through reading a book and treat them like a dialogue. Often, I like to read reviews of the books I’m reading when I’m somewhere between halfway and two-thirds of the way through a book. I’ve figured out that this is the best method for me because it allows me to engage with reviews more like a conversation. Once I’ve well into a book and have started forming my own opinion about it, I’ll read a review or two and keep the reviewer’s main points in mind as I finish the book. As I’m reading, I’ll consider whether or not I agree and mentally compile evidence for my opinion. What do I do with this little internal dialogue? Nothing! But it makes me a better readers and reminds me that cultural criticism should be a dialogue, not a soliloquy.

3. I dismiss (almost) all reviews that don’t engage with what a book is trying to do. This isn’t to say that every review needs to actively point out a novel’s aims, but I really struggle with book reviews that come down to a reviewer saying they didn’t like a book because they wanted it to be a different book. I talked about this with Traci Thomas in this podcast and plan to write much more about this topic, but it fits well as part of this conversation too. When I maintain a high bar for reviews, it allows me to tune out the noise (positive and negative!) surrounding a book. If someone says that a book is bad or doesn’t work, I think to myself “bad at what” or “what work did it fail at?” If the review doesn’t engage with those questions, I let it go. Maybe I’ll end up agreeing with the reviewer! But I’ll be going into the book without that baggage.

4. I’m mindful about how I like to read, not just what. I think we can easily accept that other readers have different taste and like different books than we do. But, for me, it’s actually been a growing understanding that how and why I read is different than other readers that has helped me. I like to read slowly, make connections between the books that I read, and reread passages that I particularly love. I enjoy reading for structure and theme. I actually like reading experiences that make me feel confused. All of this impacts what I bring to a book review. Readers who read for different reasons—for example, for complete escape or to be fully consumed by a story—are going to review books from a different vantage point.

5. I dote upon my own taste idiosyncrasies. Over my decades of reading, I’ve discovered very particular quirks about what I do and don’t like in my books. I like periodic sentences. I don’t like sentences that are lists. I like books that are driven by themes. I don’t like books that withhold a Big Secret to force me to keep turning pages. I like well-developed symbolism. I don’t like an over-reliance on similes. While I always try to read outside my comfort zone, I also completely indulge my own idiosyncrasies, and fully believe that other readers have these taste quirks too—even if they’re not spelling them out in their reviews. This allows me to move on and trust myself even when I feel like the only person with a contrary book opinion. Sure, everyone else adores Demon Copperhead, but a couple of sentences over-explaining a moral can tank a book for me. Yes, there’s some plot handwaving in Real Americans, but I love a book that sets out to explore deep thematic questions. Knowing these things about myself allows me to appreciate different opinions, without being influenced by them.

6. Sometimes I do let others influence me. As mentioned, I try to avoid going into any book with too many opinions in my head, but after I read a book, I try to remain open to influence. I actually love it when smart readers point out the brilliance in a book that I had overlooked or remind me of the way my positionality may impact the way I interpret or receive a novel. So while I have a real fondness for my own taste, I also try to learn about craft to remind myself that what we conceive of as good storytelling is variable and socially constructed. I read lots of reviews (sometimes for books I haven’t and won’t read) to understand how other people approach books. I engage in book clubs where sometimes I leave with my opinion of the book radically changed. All of this reminds me that changing my mind is good and that other people’s opinions can be a piece of the larger puzzle of how I understand any given book.

7. I occasionally read books no one else is reading. In his Reading in Public guest essay,

   Hunter Mclendon
   wrote about how reading deep backlist books that aren’t all over the internet helped him hone is own taste. I’ve taken that to heart and when I’m feeling especially burnt out by internet reviews and feeling like I can’t fully form my own opinion about anything, I grab something off my shelf, from my library, or from a used bookstore that I don’t know anything about. Not only does this solve the problem in the immediate, but it serves as a reset allowing me to focus back on my taste and opinions.

Tell me your thoughts! Do you struggle with letting other people’s reviews impacting your feelings about a book as you read it? How do you avoid this potential pitfall?

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-Sara