Reviewing books ... or not

Ever since I started writing on django@zerokspot I wondered whether I should really write reviews about books. While I like a certain kind of writing probably as much as the next guy … with SciFi literature and also more or less with any novel it by far doesn’t matter as much to me as the world that is described in it.

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Let’s take the Star Wars universe as an example. If I read a book taking place in it, after about 10 pages I’ve stopped caring about how the book is written and I’m completely in this universe of the Jedi and I see the plot of the book more as a part of that universe and therefor no longer really notice the writing style or things like that. Because of that there weren’t really any books I’ve read so far in the Star Wars or Star Trek universe that received bad scores from me, although perhaps they would have deserved them if reviews by someone who isn’t really into the respective universe.

While there definitely is some difference in quality between let’s say for example something like Vernor Vinge’s “A Fire upon the Deep” and a book of the X-Wing series. But all I see is the respective and similarly fascinating universe and therefor can’t really judge the books.

Another reason probably is, that I normally don’t simply buy books without first checking out at least some reviews on Amazon or other shops. Esp. when I bought books not set in any of the “big universes” those reviews helped me quite a lot so far to really find just great books.

So I guess it would be kind of pointless to keep the whole reviewing system with books. I’m not yet sure if I should really drop explicit reviews, but at least now I don’t see the point in them if all you’ll end up seeing are tons of 4s and 5s. Not to mention that it would mean a couple of lines less code to write for django@zerokspot ;-)