#BeCritical

Recently something happened on the internet that gave concern as to how people are rating books on Goodreads.com. That person was Bazpiere on Youtube. He noticed a reviewer on goodreads was mostly rating her books as 5 start ratings. This was crazy to him because if people are reading books they typically aren't reading all 5 start rating books. He thought something fishy was going on and just wanted to let the community know. He would like for people to truly think about the books they are reading and being more critical towards them, as well as when they write the reviews for the books.

I am not saying that this person is getting paid to rate the books as 5 star ratings but it is something that can be easily done. Honestly, until recently I would just give books a star rating without really writing a review at all for the book. I just assumed people aren't going to care about my review or what I thought about that book or so. I have now started being very critical and trying to write better reviews for my books. My reviews are not going to be anything like how Barry writes his reviews because he is very critical but I am using his reviews as a way to help me grasp how I want mine to be.

I am focusing on making myself aware of what I am reading and write how it made me feel. They way I decide if a books was good is based on the content of the story, the characters-and how much I could relate to them- and my overall feelings while reading. There are many times where the book was great but the author's writing isn't that great. As long as that didn't cause any problems for me to understand the story then I'd say it was a good book.

Each and every single person is unique so I would expect each and every review of books to be different. There are several things that people can catch in a book and it will be different from someone else who read the same book. Two people are going to get different themes, ideas and emotions from the same book. That is was is so amazing about us.

I agree with Barry that people should be more aware with the reviews they are writing but I think the way Barry brought it to people's attention could have been executed a little better.