Discussion: Do You Review Every Book You Read?


I've been wondering about this a lot lately,  do you review every book you read?

For me, I do. It's become a habit for me. It doesn't matter if it's a book I bought, a library book or a review book, I review every single book I read. I feel like it's my duty to. Afterall, I created this book blog to share my love of reading with others and voice my opinions on the books I have read and I've been doing this for almost two years. To be completely honest, it has become slightly tedious. I can't remember when last I read a book just for pleasure, without reviewing it afterwards, without making endless notes and spending lots of time on formatting the review and typing it up. 

There have been lots of times where I want to only review the books that I have received to review and books I have a very strong opinion on (whether it be that I loved it or hated it) but then I end up reviewing them anyway.  I feel like I have to . I'd feel guilty if I didn't. I want to share my opinions with you guys but sometimes I don't feel up to writing a review on that book. I also feel bad when I see comments on my book hauls saying  that they can't wait to see my opinion on the book, which makes me feel like I need to review it. Does anyone else have this predicament?

I also feel like I am expected to write these really well -written reviews. Publishers and authors see my reviews and as much as I would love to write fangirling, gushing reviews with an explosion of gifs, I have to hold back because I need my reviews to be professional.  My reviews I write are extremely long, in depth reviews and it gets quite tiring after a while if I'm reading book after book after book, but I want my reviews to be the best quality that they can be. Sometimes I think, why do I even write such long reviews when it seems like nobody is even reading them? It's really upsetting knowing that I've spent all my time on these reviews and sometimes I don't even get a single comment on it. I know this happens to all book bloggers and that's why I always try to leave a comment on a post I have read. Just so that the blogger knows that someone has taken time to read their post.

Reviewing every book also really slows down my reading. I need to make notes for every book I read, format the blog post, type it up, promote it and doing that can sometimes take me a day and then I've lost a whole day of reading because I have been so busy reviewing the previous book. I have this rule, where I will not start the next book until my review for the previous book has been completed. 

I find that this process is seriously depleting my love of reading and blogging and I don't want that to happen. Since I was 6 I have been a complete bookaholic and I can't remember a time of my life where I haven't loved reading and I don't want this to feel like work, because it isn't! It's a hobby. One that I love.

So I really need your opinions! Do you review every book you read? If you do, do you find it hard? If not, how does it work for you?

Comments

  1. I review a really low amount (partly because I read so many, but also because it REALLY burns me out trying to find stuff to say about books I don't feel particularly strongly about.) I've read 50 this year and am guessing I've reviewed about 20. (It helps that when accepting copies for my blog, I state that I only review stuff I'd recommend so if it's so-so I don't bother. Library books/bought books have to be pretty great to merit a review from me.)

    Interesting question; will be intrigued to see people's answers!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks! :)

      It burns me out too, trying to review so many books and it's taking away my enjoyment of reading/blogging which is terrible!

      Delete
  2. I have never reviewed books in the past. Last year I started reviewing books I wanted to share my opinion about.

    I have now just started a book blog and i'm goona start reviewing the books I read from now on. My reviews are not long and never very in depth, they may not be very good reviews but it's what I think about the book. I never let the reviews take over and I may edit them, but its not important they are so in depth they bore the person reading it.

    Plz can you check out my blog www.kindlebookreads.blogspot.com thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmm I agree, I think shorter reviews can be better as sometimes people don't really want to spend so long reading a really in depth review!

      Thanks for commenting! :)

      Delete
  3. I read so many books in a year, I'd probably go crazy if I had to review each one. Plus I think people would get tired of my blog because all it'd be is reviews. Typically I'll have notes or a first draft review for all the books I read, but I only make sure to post reviews the ones that I received for review or have strong feelings about. My notes and first drafts are more for if I end up with nothing to blog about. I'll already have notes/draft to go off of and review books that I have not reviewed yet. I don't feel guilty at all. I always keep in mind that it's my blog, and I can really do whatever I want with it. & Ultimately, I'm a reader first and foremost. So I just want to keep reading enjoyable. If I forced myself to review each book, I'd become frustrated reviewing and reading by association. I'm trying to avoid that at all costs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're right, it is my blog and I can choose what to review, how long the reviews should be etc. Thanks! :)

      Delete
  4. OMG!!! I totally related with this topic. I used to review every single book I read but when I started working full time I had to make a choice. Now, I only review the ones publisher or author request me to. Also I review those I love or hate, just as you said. I started reading for fun again because reviewing was becoming more and more stressful.
    And I know you feel nobody reads your reviews but I'm sure someone is reading them. Blogging and reading should be a way to escape our daily lives. And books are a big part of who we are, don't let stress get that away from you.
    Best
    Ruty@Reading...Dreaming

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think I'd go crazy if I had to review every book I read! At the moment I mostly review books from publishers, and I like being able to read my own books without having to think too much about what to talk about in a review. Also, because I read so many books, I think that if I wrote a review for all of them people would get quite bored of my blog because there would never be any variation in the posts.

    If it's really tiring you out, and (worse!) preventing you from enjoying books, maybe you could try just reviewing some of them? I know that for me it's a lot more relaxing to not review everything.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I don't review every book I read because sometimes there isn't much to say and also I need to read for the FUN of it instead of having to keep an eye out for anything I'm not keen on. I switch off my brain for a while :P At the moment I have a lot of reviews and books to catch up on so I'm holding off on reviewing the books I've bought with my own money unless I absolutely HAVE to gush about them. Great post, Kyra! :D

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi, I just started following you. I can't believe you review every single book you read! That must get to be a lot. To me it sounds like maybe you should put aside a set of books to read purely for enjoyment, or only review the ones that really strike you as either great or awful. I hope things become a little less stressful than they sound right now!
    http://avoidingsocialinteration.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  8. Two things I forgot to mention earlier - firstly, I don't review every book, as I said, but I do keep a private notebook with thoughts on them. That's usually only a sentence or two but just to help me remember if there was something I particularly liked/disliked.

    Secondly, I know what you mean about being disappointed not to get comments on reviews but I think reviews are probably the least likely to pull in commenters. Discussion posts like this get far more people interested (as you can see!)

    Really great comments above, by the way - it's definitely an interesting topic.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I try to review a book straight after I've finished it or at least a day after so the end feeling is still fresh in my mind!

    I have that problem with writing reviews because I never know whether to keep it professional or to fangirl my heart out. If I'm reviewing a book for a publisher or author I tend to keep really professional and sophisticated as possible but if it's a book I've been waiting like a year for I have like heaps of gifs and probably to many exclamation marks and caps lock.

    ReplyDelete
  10. If you aren't enjoying it...don't do it! It's as simple as that. If you keep burning yourself out on reviews, you're going to start hating it and resenting your blog. Just try to make YOURSELF happy, and don't worry about pleasing other people. Obviously you still need to review your for-review books, but maybe try taking a break on reviewing the other ones? Or maybe only write reviews for the ones that you REALLY have something to say about.

    Personally I always write reviews for every single book I read (sometimes I'll skip reviewing novellas, though, if I don't have anything particularly interesting to say about it because it was so short), but that's just me. I also don't post many of them on my blog, because I have certain criteria for the reviews that I feature there, so most of them are only on Goodreads.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I don't review ALL the books I read, because I think writing reviews for all the books I read are going to take a super long time.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Hi there! Thank you so much for taking the time to comment on my blog! I appreciate every single comment and they always make my day. I love making new bookish friends so don't be afraid to say hi! :) x
http://blogofabookaholic.blogspot.com/2014/03/discussion-do-you-review-every-book-you.html
blogofabookaholic.blogspot.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-04
143521
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:JVH4NTJ5ZBGJG4NZYF5HZG63D5KRNU34
<urn:uuid:acc77d88-5b46-4413-a09b-48818fe44d61>
2019-01-22T10:33:49Z
172.217.7.193
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:OEBKAW7AJ37ACJMRSGMI67SY3RLTHULF
<urn:uuid:4e62983a-ea8e-4c06-a5ef-b8d6838d7fd3>
http://blogofabookaholic.blogspot.com/2014/03/discussion-do-you-review-every-book-you.html
response
<urn:uuid:bde87e0e-29ad-4361-9c58-24342e1fc7cf>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-04
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-149-111-56.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 0.11-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/