Hello, and happy Friday! I hope that you’ve all had a good week. I had a ton of dance which was really fun, and my sister’s birthday was today, so we did some fun stuff for that! Anyways, I’m very excited for this week’s LTB topic, which is all about reviewing books, so I’m going to get right into this post!

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly bookish meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and has been hosted by me since April of this year! Each Friday, there is a discussion topic for bloggers to write about. This week’s topic is reviewing books, suggested by Rachel @ A Bookworm in Paradise!

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What makes you want to review or not review a book?

The biggest thing that makes me want to review a book is if I have a lot of opinions about it. I love reviewing books that I loved reading, but especially ones that have characters that really stood out to me, or ones that had plots I was really invested in. If all I have to say about a book is “I liked it,” or “it was fine,” the review isn’t going to be that interesting. But if I have lots of specific reasons why I liked (or didn’t like) a book, then I’ll have more fun writing the review, and it will be more interesting to read.

Do you review every book you read?

Definitely not. Reviews take a lot of time, and I read way to many books to review them all. I rarely review more than one or two books a month, and in recent months I haven’t been reviewing any at all. I’ve had times where I’ve tried to write short reviews on Storygraph, and I do have a lot of thoughts on books I’ve read. But I definitely don’t have stuff for all the books I’ve read on there because that would just be a lot to keep up with.

Are some books harder to review than others?

Definitely. Some books, even if I like them, are just really hard to write meaningful reviews for. If a book is good, but not unique or that engaging, then it can be difficult to find specific points to touch on in my review, and so the review will end up sounding boring.

Do you review books you disliked? If you’ve ever written a ranty review, have you regretted doing so afterwards?

I don’t usually review books I dislike, because I think its more fun to review books that I really loved instead. Sometimes, I’ll write a more negative review of a book that I got a review copy of, but I try to avoid that by being careful to only request review copies of books I’m confident I’ll love.

As for writing ranty reviews of books I didn’t like that I regret writing, I have a few examples of reviews where I went in the opposite direction, and wish that I hadn’t been so soft on the books.

I thought that if I was reviewing a book I got as a review copy from the author or publisher, it would be rude to write a more negative review of the book, even if the criticism was constructive and I was careful how I wrote it. I ended up just toning down my complaints, and that has led me to look back on a couple of old reviews and wish that I’d written more.

Do you delete reviews that are “outdated” or don’t follow what you think of the book now?

No. I have a lot of reviews from the past few years, and although my opinions may have changed, I’ve never felt like I need to go delete or change them. Maybe someday I’ll have a complete change of heart and decide I need to go back and change some old reviews, but as of now, that hasn’t happened yet.

I know that there are some books where I wrote one review, and then my opinions on it changed, but I think that it’s kind of nice to have all of my past opinions on the book out there, and that’s not something I’d necessarily want to get rid of.

This week’s posts:

Hannah @ Hannah’s Library | Becky @ Becky Bookstore | Fives @ Down the Rabbit Hole | Lotus @ Pages of Starlight | Ruby @ Ruby Reads and Reviews | Elli @ Ace Reader | Leslie @ Books are the New Black | Raji @ Worlds Unlike Our Own | Jillian @ The Bookish Butterfly

Thanks so much to everyone who participated, and don’t forget to go and discover some new blogs! If I missed your post, let me know in the comments so I can add it up here!

Do you like reviewing books? How do you choose what books to review? Do you like reviewing books? Chat with me in the comments below!