If I get a review copy of a book that sounded interesting from a publicist, but it turns out I kind of hate the book, am I still obliged to read it and write it up for the blog? I’m not talking about the totally unsolicited review copies that turn up unannounced in my mail– I feel no obligation to read those at all– but a book where I replied to an email to specifically request a copy.
On the one hand, they did send me something free, expecting some publicity in return. On the other, I suspect they’d be just as happy having me not post a review saying “The first three pages of this made me want to scoop my eyes out with a grapefruit spoon, so as to avoid having to read the rest of it.”
On the additional appendage of your choice, though, do I owe it to my readers to warn them off a book that I found kind of awful? Even if it’s mostly just that the overlap between their intended audience and me is zero, and I suspect the book might appeal to the people they want it to appeal to?
Let’s make this (social) scientific-like:
(Note: If you are a publicist who sent me a book, don’t worry. I’m not talking about your book, which I liked very much, and have just been too busy to review. As far as you know.)
You don’t review everything you read, but you went into this book thinking that it sounded interesting enough to request a copy of, so I think you should give an honest review of how it met your expectations. (One additional consideration: some authors are silent on books they don’t like because they don’t want to seem to be slagging the competition, but lots of others review books for newspapers etc., so this is hardly a universal opinion.)
I’m somewhere between #2 and #3. You’re not obligated to review anything. But if you have something worth saying, then hey, go for it.
Beyond that, I’m not a fan of “entertainingly scathing.” Sometimes just “this is bad, and here’s why” is enough. Though there are some kinds of willful idiocy that are worth ripping apart…
I don’t think you owe the publicist anything, unless you specifically said “If you send me a book, I will definitely talk about it in my blog.” Which, you know, you could do, since it is your blog.
However, I think you do owe your readers something*. I think it’s safe to assume that readers of your blog share some of your interests – that’s why they read your blog. In the case of this book, something in the title or description said “Chad Orzel would love this book.” When you read the book, you found out that wasn’t true.
Your readers might be thinking the exact same thing about this book right now – “I might love this book.” Since you’ve been given a copy specifically for a review, you could do your readers a huge favor by giving an honest appraisal of the book. Be honest – saying that the book did not appeal to you but might appeal to somebody else, could give the book a nice lift, prevent the wrong reader from picking it up and hating it, or even possibly find the right reader for the book (we don’t all agree with /everything/ you say).
You certainly don’t have to spend a lot of time on it, but a short, honest appraisal would be nice.
K
* Note: You don’t actually owe your readers anything – we’re not paying you, after all. However, you do have an opportunity to help out your readers.
I’m in the you-don’t-have-any-obligation-to-review-the-book camp, but I’m all for entertaining skewering since it’s so fun to read. You could also return the book, thereby obviating any guilt, but that would come at a cost to you.
Now that you’ve posted about it, you’re definitely obligated to finish it and review it. Sorry.
“Obligated” may be a bit strong, but I think if you read it intending to review it, at least a brief “I didn’t like this book, and I think it’s really aimed at a different audience” would be useful to your readers. It might also be helpful to identify the intended audience, if you can (educated non-physicists? hockey fans?) and anything else you can usefully add without spending too much time and energy.
[Commenting partly because there was no option for “yes, you should do this, but not because you owe the publicist/writer/publisher something.”]
I had a similar dilemma a few years ago when someone asked me to review a book on shamanism (which as a palaeolithic researcher isn’t quite as bonkers as it sounds), unfortunately, like you, I quickly realised it was a work of total bollocks.
I thought about a review but then realised I probably lacked the ability to do so without them finding some snippet of positivity amongst it all.
So I left it well alone.
Your time is valuable. No one is paying you to do this. They sent you the book with hopes, but you made no promises.
For our part, your blog is hella fun – do whatever you want and we’ll be entertained. Negative reviews are informative and entertaining. But so are pet pictures and conversations with your dog and True Lab Stories.
That’s the bottom line, imnsho. Only so many hours in the day, and forcing yourself to slog through something optional which you find unpleasant takes away from the good stuff.
Another option is to tell the publisher that the book is awful and you won’t be reviewing it.
No, you don’t owe the publisher anything. You don’t really owe your readers anything either (though, of course, if we find you don’t give us anything worth our time, we’ll bugger off). However, if you intend to review books somewhat seriously, I don’t think it is a good idea to skip reviewing a book only because your review would be negative. There may be many other, more valid reasons, but if “the review would be negative” is the only thing stopping you, then I’m not sure you are doing your readers any services. A well-reasoned, well-written negative review is informative. Whenever I am interested in a book, I try to find at least one well-written really positive review and one well-written negative one, and the see how the arguments mesh with my way of thinking.
Regardless of the answer to this question of ethics, you’ve now raised another, namely: “if I’ve suggested to my readers that I am able to write a fun review of a bad book, am I obligated to do so for their sakes?”
I don’t see anything rising to the level of true ‘obligation’ here, but doing something would be right decent.
You could always send a brief email to the publisher telling them how you felt about the book. That would increase the likelihood that if they publish another book you want to read that they will send it to you.
Alternatively, you could explain why you thought the book would be interesting, why it doesn’t suit you, and raffle it off to the cleverest blog commenter who posts a review of the worst book they have ever read.
If that is too much work, you could just pass it on to a student or something. I have an enduring love for any prof that gave me a random book, even if I knew it was just cause they needed to get rid of it.
I always feel bad for ‘bad’ books* like this, like I want to tell them “it’s not you, it’s me!”. This would at least give the book another chance to find a good home.
*keep in mind that for me at an early age, Lewis Thomas was a passel of freaking awesome… but as I got to learn a lot more biology, some of the vivid writing just struck me as too inaccurate and I no longer could read him. ‘bad’ can really be very context/reader dependent.
Life is too short to spend your own time reading mediocre books. (If somebody were paying you for the review, that would be a different matter.) It would be decent to let the publisher know why you dislike the part of the book you have read enough to not finish it. But unless this book falls into the so-bad-it’s-wonderful category, you shouldn’t feel obliged to publish a review on your blog. Just set the book aside lightly, unless you can entertain yourself by writing an explanation of why it should instead be hurled across the room with great force.
Sorry, I misread and thought you had already read the whole book. Given that you haven’t, I don’t think you owe anyone anything.
I’m gonna echo what KevinQ said at #3.
You don’t owe them anything – or us, I’ll have to reluctantly admit.
But it’s always more fun to read scathing reviews that totally destroy their subject.
I vote for #4, but only because it has the word “Moriarty” in it.
Yeah, another echo of #3 — if you just asked for a copy, review not required, if you specifically said “give me one and I promise to review it”, let’s see what you thought of it. (Doesn’t have to be good, though. Unless you said “Give me one and I’ll give it a positive review.”)
Your blog reminds me of an incident from my past.
About 20 years ago I regularly wrote book reviews on computer science topics for the New Scientist, and suggested to them that I might like to review a book on computer ethics, which they requested for me. When I got the book it was little more that a rehash of press reports on computer crime – and did not mention the codes of ethics of any professional computer body anywhere in the world. I did not review it.
About a year later I was publicly attacked on a computer bulletin board by one of the authors (who was teaching computer ethics) saying that I must have stopped the New Scientist from reviewing the book on the grounds that I had applied for a professorial post at his university and had not been shortlisted. His understanding of computer ethics was so limited that he didn’t consider it unethical to use confidential job application information in that way – which clearly justified my assumption from reading the book that he did not understand the first thing about computer ethics.
In any case his facts were wrong – in that I did not even see the advert for the university opening until after I had decided not to review the book, and hadn’t realised that there was any connection between the university and the incompetent author. While I did submit an application I was not short-listed because I later decided to withdraw the application!
In fact over perhaps 10 years I was sent between 100 and 200 books by the New Scientist (some on my suggestion) and they were looking for interesting reviews (sometimes in groups on similar topics) which would be relevant to the needs to their readers. If I got an excellent book which, on detailed reading, was not appropriate for the magazine it would not get a review, and I didn’t get paid for the unwritten review. This often happened with books which were sent to New Scientist unsolicited, but also to some requested books which on reading turned out to be too elementary or too deeply academic.
So don’t feel bad if you don’t review the book if you feel the review will not be of interest to your readers.
Keeerriiiist dude you are over thinking this. Do what you want and stop thinking about what you owe to others. The publisher gave to the book hoping for cheap publicity. That’s their risk to take. I would probably love to hear what you have to say about the book. But the day I develop a sense of entitlement over your blog is the day you need to tell me to get stuffed.
I think you do owe statistics a review of the book. This is really an analogue of positive research results being published while negative results end up in a desk drawer.
If you regularly post positive reviews, I think it would be a good thing to post the negative ones as well, simply to avoid the kind of sampling bias that’d create an impression that books in your genre are generally better than they really are.
Doesn’t have to be a long, thoughtful review (just like negative results don’t necessarily need a big writeup). Mentioning the title and a grapefruit spoon in the same sentence should be plenty.
I don’t think you owe the publisher anything, really. If you request and then don’t write about a bunch of their books, their recourse is to stop sending them to you.
If you found a book well and truly awful, especially if that awfulness is a result of a gross misunderstanding of the subject, then you might have some responsibility to the community to point out said misunderstanding.
If the book is fodder for an appropriately-comic evisceration, then owe it to us, your devoted audience, to write it.
If “…it’s mostly just that the overlap between their intended audience and me is zero, and I suspect the book might appeal to the people they want it to appeal to,” then I suspect you can let it go. Reviews of works in genre X written by people who do not like genre X are offensive to those that like genre X and boring to those that dislike it.