I was reading a newspaper the other day. I found myself in the arts and entertainment section where I was drawn to a books review. It was a few paragraphs about new children’s books that were coming out for the holidays. The books sounded pretty interesting and I wished I could go to a bookstore and look at some of them.
Sometimes if I do go find a book that I read about in a books review, I discover that I don’t completely agree with the reviewer. I guess it’s about the same thing as reading movie reviews. It is helpful to get a short recap of the general story and theme, but you may not agree with the emotional responses of the reviewer. Actually, I usually find that I don’t agree when it comes to movie reviews.
With a books review it’s a little different because it tends to be more in depth like the original of a movie review, but the reviews don’t get cut down into small blurbs like movie reviews do. So I guess it’s more like reading the back of a book in that it tells you about the form of the plot and the general story. I hardly ever really use the review of a book to inform what I will buy. I know what authors I like already and I find new authors I like by going to the library and trying out authors. I do like to look at children’s books and see what’s new, but going to a bookstore can take care of that. The day that I was reading about some new children’s books coming out though, the review did really perk my interest in a few books partially because of the beautiful illustrations that were exampled in the newspaper. I ended up in a bookstore while I was doing some holiday shopping and I checked out a couple of the books I had read about with my niece in mind. She’s five years old. I still loved the illustrations but I decided to get her some stickers to play with instead. The books were a little out of my holiday budget, but I wished that wasn’t true and I could buy some new books for her.