Home For Fiction – Blog

for thinking people


review

Review of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce

December 29, 2018

Writing a review of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce, by Paul Torday, is an exhilarating experience. I get to talk about the brilliance of the novel and the hopeless mediocrity that surrounds us.

Indeed, it’s interesting to give you a quick briefing of how I discovered The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce.

I saw the book at the local library. As I sometimes do with authors I haven’t read before, I took a quick look at Goodreads reviews. The average rating of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce is (at the time of this review) 3.49/5. The thing is, I have the experience to know that if a book (or a film) features bad ratings by the social masses, it might mean it’s actually good.

Taking a look at one or two reviews, I felt certain it was a book I wanted to read. People complained that there was no resolution to the story. Others gave the book 2 stars because… the protagonist was in denial.

The level of ignorance and mediocrity is appalling, when it comes to unsophisticated readers.

And so, let’s see what I thought about Torday’s novel. This is a review of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce. It’s also another chance for me to express my dismay at the social mediocrity that has enthralled the world. Ironically enough, the two processes are metatextually related as you will see.

review of The Irresistible Inheritance of Wilberforce
(more…)

How to Read Better: a Guide to Understanding Fiction

November 20, 2018

I have complained many times on this blog about mediocre fiction. I’ve also complained about the loss of the art of reading. Put simply, the average person has lost the ability to read. Combining the two, we need to realize that, in order to read better fiction, we must also learn how to read better.

In other words, there is a chain of causes and consequences. It goes in a way like this:

how to read better

As you can see, there is a feedback loop here. Reading a book poorly will cause you to leave some erroneous feedback. That is, it will lead you to either downplay the importance of a high-quality book, or overestimate the merits of a mediocre one.

Subsequently, this will distort the book’s intrinsic value. In a world replete with noise, a mediocre book read by mediocre readers receives far more attention than a higher-quality book misunderstood by its mediocre readers. Inevitably, this facilitates the creation and propagation of mediocre literature, which leads back to poor reading.

It is a very vicious cycle. And, since art imitates life (which imitates art in another vicious cycle), this leads us to societal mediocrity.

(more…)

How to Receive Feedback for Your Book: The Lost Review

October 23, 2018

Some time ago, I read a book that shall remain unnamed (and so will its author). The implied deal was that I would read the book for free, in exchange for a review. I read the book and came up with a detailed review trying to offer several points that would help the author as well as any prospective readers. But one should know how to receive feedback before asking for a review. Otherwise, unexpected things might happen!

In this case, after reading the review, the author asked me not to publish it on Goodreads. The rating I would have offered for the book in question would have been a 3/5 stars. As always, I review and rate from the perspective of the intended audience. But the author kindly asked me not to publish the review anyway.

How to Receive Feedback: Learn to Separate between Subjective and Objective

I respected the writer’s wish and didn’t publish the review. What disappointed me the most wasn’t the fact that I couldn’t publish a review I put some effort in. Rather – and perhaps naturally, for an educator – I was sad because I got the feeling the author didn’t understand the subtle difference between liking/disliking a book and reviewing it.

how to receive feedback
(more…)