Feeding the Creative Soul – Book Reviews

Writers need reviews; they need feedback from readers, they want word about their books to spread and what better way than by word of mouth via a review? 

But of course writers are readers too. Reading feeds creativity and so does reviewing. There’s something about thinking in depth about a good book that can spark ideas almost from nowhere. Many of the best reviewers are also successful and prolific writers. Indeed, writers more than most should be conscientious about reviewing what they read.

As a writer I know that all too well. Do I live by it? I’d love to say an unequivocal yes, but I can’t. One reason is time. If I’m going to review a book, I want to write something about it, not just tick a random number of stars*. I tend to ‘stack’ my reviews, save them up until I get into a proper review mood and then catch up the backlog. It doesn’t always work. Sometimes I leave it just a bit too long and as I sit down to put pen to paper I realise that I don’t remember enough about the book to say anything coherent, so it has to return to my read-again pile and hope that I’ll catch it next time round.

I’m just in the middle of a bit of a review frenzy at present. Not expecting to clear the entire backlog, but HERE is a recent one.

*more on the tiresome star system in a later post.