One of the questions we most frequently encounter in our email here at The Private Library is, "why don't you do book reviews?" This question is usually followed by something like "I know your focus is book collecting, but wouldn't reviews of individual books help me in that effort?
The short answer to this is implicit in the follow-on question above: TPL does indeed try to stay focused on the forest (the whys and hows and ins and outs of book collecting generally), rather than on the trees (individual books). There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of book review sites on the Internet, both websites and blogs. There are not, however, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of sites devoted to helping folks who are new to book collecting, or who have a general interest in that topic.
We try to give our readers sufficient information in our posts to search out book reviews themselves, should particular titles that we cover prove of interest. We would caution all our readers, though, that book reviews, like movie reviews, are not always what they seem. Free review copies of books, like free movie screenings and other special treatment accorded book and movie reviewers by publishers and studios, often leads to an unwillingness on the part of reviewers to treat books and movies as even-handedly as they should. Fortunately, many of the best book and film reviewers shun the favored treatment and tell it like is, consequences be damned (there even are a number of reviewers who turn out consistently even-handed reviews despite the freebies.)
Sniff around ... the hyperbolic puffery that clogs the feeds on Twitter and FaceBook and like social media notwithstanding, there are reliable guides to individual books (and movies) out there.... (Tip 'o the hat to MaxFawcett.com for the image.)
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