Many review sites and periodicals give grades in reviews. As a reader, my eyes immediately go to the letter then I read the review. When paging through the Entertainment Weekly book reviews, grades play a huge part in the order in which I read. Going page by page is just too boring. In general I start with the main review. This week, two books on Jamestown hold this honor. After that I skip to the mini-reviews. These are 4-6 books in the same genre that are set out in a special box. This week the “special box” focuses on comics. The title is From Superheroes to Absolute Zeros. From there I check the bestseller charts and then onto the other reviews.

The “others” is where the grading comes into play for me. I start with the low grades (D range), then do the high (all the forms of A), then end with the Bs and Cs. This week all of the “other” reviews were As and Bs except one. One got a D-. The book is the March 27th release The Alibi Man by Tami Hoag. The review starts like this: “Could Tami Hoag have been as bored with her own book as I was?” It goes downhill from there with comments about “flimsy” characters and bad dialog. I haven’t read the book, but I certainly found the review entertaining.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 25th, 2007 at 8:50 am and is filed under About Authors, About Books, About Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.