Book Reviews?

[Kelise]

Book Club all depends on whether we get the go-ahead, as it would probably need its own section to run, I think?

Depending on what we want to post about book award sets, I could post about the Aurealis Awards? 2011 winners were announced last weekend, and I was one of the judges for anthologies/collections. Did we want to focus on reviewing the books that won the awards?

 

[Devor]

About the Book Club: I think you can start it in the Novels forum, and then ask for its own forum if/when the time comes. I can't imagine you need to wait on permission to get it going.

About the awards: I'll tell you what I told Cloud. To get a discussion going, I think you should post a link to the awards, and a sentence or two about them, and then give your opinions about what the awards mean for us as writers.

 

[Phin Scardaw]

Okay, so I'm compiling some info on Good Reviewing.

I'm totally down with sharing the responsibilities of Review Leadership in the future.

I plan to have my review done in a week.

Right now I find myself temporarily with a lot on my plate: taxes, finishing my novel-in-progress, hiring new staff for my piano bar, drafting material for bartending courses I plan on launching in the next month or two, life, etc, etc... So while I may not appear as present in this thread as I should be (which I keep mistyping as "threat" for some reason - Subconscious, what are you trying to tell me???) please please please don't think I'm flaking out, because I am fully committed. I'm just also ridiculously busy, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Anyway, I'm excited about where this is going, and in the days to come I'll have more to contribute.

 

[Devor]

Anyway, I'm excited about where this is going, and in the days to come I'll have more to contribute.

Flaking out is agreeing to do something, and then disappearing for weeks without a word. Trying to give yourself a completely reasonable timeframe for doing something, and then checking in every couple of days with a status update, is called . . . err, doing as much as could be expected of you.

I just have to keep this from dropping off of everyone's radar, and make sure everyone's aware that things are moving forward at a reasonable pace. That's all. I happen to be home with two kids, and bored out of my mind, so taking a minute to post here is nothing for me. But if I was writing the review, I'd want about a week, too.

I look forward to seeing the Good Reviewing tips.

 

[Phin Scardaw]

Okay so I've put together some of the different articles I've found about writing good reviews. I posted them in my Portfolio. Here is the link:

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/portfolios/phin-scardaw/112-book-review-guidelines.html

It's all basic stuff, but it gives some good tips and a general format.

 

[writeshiek33]

been hectic week still interested but will get myself together next wek find out right time i can contribute to this

 

[Devor]

Okay so I've put together some of the different articles I've found about writing good reviews. I posted them in my Portfolio. Here is the link:

http://mythicscribes.com/forums/portfolios/phin-scardaw/112-book-review-guidelines.html

It's all basic stuff, but it gives some good tips and a general format.

Great stuff!

I'm going to consolidate the tips and pointers into a single post which doesn't quote the articles, and it'll follow the Template in the Intro thread.

Can you do me a favor? Can you update your portfolio entry with links to a source for each of those articles? I don't really care what the sources are, but some people like to see them, and especially, giving proper credit and citations is important for a lot of the people we're looking to as readers.

been hectic week still interested but will get myself together next wek find out right time i can contribute to this

Things are moving fast, so within a week to ten days we should be set up for people to jump in writing book reviews. The Book Club starts soon afterwards. In the meantime there's not much left that I can think of - I'm on the intro thread, Phin's on the first review, Kelise is on the Book Club.

We're all open to feedback and ideas, but in terms of help, all I can think of right now in the set-up stage that would be useful is to find other ways to help develop the community in the Novels forum, since the activity levels between all of these reading-focused forums is almost certainly going to be linked.

 

[Cloud]

How are we deciding which books to review? Classics? Contemporaries?

Is it an advantage to have read the book before and re-read it for the review, or should a review ideally be a first-time reader?

Is anybody 'baggsying' books? Would this be the right place to do so or should there be a separate thread for that?

There's a book on my reading list that I'd love to baggsy for my first review... The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

Perhaps we could run a kind of optioning system? If you'd like to reserve a book to review, you could option it for three months? If no review is forthcoming in that time, it's open for another member to review if they so wish? Probably not entirely necessary - but just a thought.

I'm halfway through Green Mars at the moment, then I've got Quicksilver on the way from Amazon - but I've got The Graveyard Book slated in for third down the line.

 

[Devor]

Great thoughts, Cloud.

I would love to see a goals list of books we'd like to get reviews for, but at least for right now I think the only reasonable thing we can do is to let people review the books they want to review and to give their own timeframe for reviewing it. I was intending to start a thread for claiming books once the forum is up, and I was hoping a mod would delete each "claim" once the review is posted or the claim expires. In the meantime, no worries, you've got the claim to review The Graveyard Book.

But the thread would read, "Claim your books here!" and you'd respond, "I'll write this book and have a review by June 10." Once the review is posted, or June 10 arrives, you or a Mod would come through and delete that post. That way it's easy to see who's claiming which reviews.

It might make a difference whether you're reading a book for the first time, or if you read it some time in the past, but it's not a difference we can pinpoint and make demands one way or the other of our book reviewers. I think we just have to hope that as a community we can edit out any weaknesses which come from favoring your most recent book, or forgetting details because you're skimming through a book you read a few months ago.

I just sent Black Dragon a PM asking him to open the "Book Review Workshop" subforum this weekend, and I'll post the process thread and the claims thread soon thereafter (or probably I'll ask Black Dragon to post them). At that point, we're open for business - but we'll still update them based on how Phin's first review looks to us. But the subforum will be open for him to post it and anyone, even those on the sidelines, can then help with the editing and start writing/claiming book reviews.

I think we can only ask people to keep to a Good Faith standard of trying to write a good review, set up processes that are easy to jump into and promote participation, and hope that the community we have is strong enough to yield a good quality and a good output of book reviews. Soon the only thing left will be figuring out a leadership structure for an active reviewing community. Hopefully that's the point we're coming to. But it's the old cliche - you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. We have plenty of fantasy readers and author fanboys, and we can make it easy for them to help out, but who knows if they will? I think they will at least a little, and that all of this will have been worth doing, and the community here will grow because of it. But we'll have to see.

 

[Cloud]

OooOoooOoohhh... perhaps a nice aspirational goal one day down the line to collate X-amount of reviews into an e-book?

Something along the lines of the "1001 books/albums/films to read/hear/see before you die" series.

But not so many. And written by us, as a community. Without a title reference to death.

 

[Kelise]

Kelise is on the Book Club.

Well, unless there's a bit more interest in it, it may not go for over a month ^^ Currently there's only three nominations, and only I have 'liked' one of them.

Though I don't mind running it for a while (even if I end up only talking to myself) as interest could wax and wane in it, I suppose. I don't mind doing the work for it with little to no participation, I just don't want to be a bother, I guess.

 

[Devor]

Well, unless there's a bit more interest in it, it may not go for over a month ^^ Currently there's only three nominations, and only I have 'liked' one of them.

People will join. Maybe you should start with Game of Thrones for the first open discussion?

OooOoooOoohhh... perhaps a nice aspirational goal one day down the line to collate X-amount of reviews into an e-book?

Underpromise. Overdeliver. Not the other way around. We don't want people constantly asking, "Where's that anthology we were promised?" or thinking, "There's some really good reviews here, but the project is a failure because there's not enough for that anthology they want."

Let's see the reviews, see what we get, and then think of ambitions that are closer to being in-line with what we're seeing.

And you never know. There are better possibilities than publishing an anthology. But we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

 

[Kelise]

People will join. Maybe you should start with Game of Thrones for the first open discussion?

Go and nominate it then I know I'll vote it up, I've been meaning to read it for a while now.

 

[writeshiek33]

just one thing for information purposes i am dyslexic can't edit my own writing to save my life

 

[Devor]

And we're up and running! Sort of. I've a few more posts to make, but the process thread and the template are posted.

How's it look? Now is the time to nitpick.

 

[Phin Scardaw]

Quick Update: I finished the Book yesterday, and I'm about halfway through the Book Review. Hoping to have a draft to share tomorrow or the next day.

 

[Devor]

Quick Update: I finished the Book yesterday, and I'm about halfway through the Book Review. Hoping to have a draft to share tomorrow or the next day.

Happy to hear it. Be sure to take a look at the updated template and process and stuff in the Review Team thread. The big goal right now is to see how well that stuff works.

 

[writeshiek33]

sorry for no contact had laptop issues now repaired so whats the update?

 

[Phin Scardaw]

Okay I just finished the review and it is Kick-Ass, if I may say so myself.

so... WHAT NOW???

i have totally been absent from this thread and from MS in general for the past two weeks or so while my life has become increasingly busier and the book and its review hung over me. but now i'm back.

do i post it here? in my portfolio? what's the next step? i need a refresher and an update.

 

[Devor]

Awesome Phin!

Start a new thread in the Book Review subforum for it, and we'll all take a look.