Corn Smut, Pond Scum, and Literary Criticism

I attended Left Coast Crime in March. At dinner one evening, I was shocked to learn that a diner at my table had corn smut smeared across her meal. She didn’t send it back to the kitchen. She ate it. The same stuff that plagued my heirloom corn crop a couple summers ago. Just goes to show you, one person’s gardening blight is another’s gourmet delicacy.

I really didn’t have much ground upon which to stand, considering that my husband calls one of my favorite juices “pond scum.” It’s green. Sure, it looks horrible, but it tastes fine, and has tons of vitamins and minerals. “Have you tried it?” I asked him. He twisted his face into a grimace and nodded his head. The same face I made when I ate a slice of his dried seaweed. Yuk.

Life experience teaches me that one person’s opinion may not agree with my own. So why are positive book reviews considered essential to a novel’s success? Have you ever read a book that got rave reviews, made the NYT bestseller list, yet did not meet your criteria for a good read?

I once bought a book because of a bad review. The reviewer was revolted by overt Christian references. Duh. It is marketed as a Christian cozy mystery. So I bought Miss Aggie Goes Missing by Frances Devine, mostly out of curiosity, and enjoyed a fun read. On the other hand, I read Water for Elephants, an acclaimed bestseller by Sara Gruen, and was not impressed. The circus and historical setting were interesting, but I just didn’t care about the characters.

My novel makes its debut in December. I am anxious about my story’s reception by the reading public. Will “they” love it, or hate it? Will a few reviews in highly visible places sink it or propel it to decent sales? Is my novel corn smut or a gourmet delight? Time will tell.

Each of us set our own criteria for what we want in a book before we make a purchase or check it out from the library. If you like hamburgers, you won’t seek out a vegetarian restaurant, or vice versa. After that, we might consult reviews. And if someone gives a bad review of a restaurant, you might never give it a try. Unless you know they wandered into the wrong establishment for their particular tastes, like the reader turned off by religious material in a Christian novel.

In the meantime, I’d like to know how disgusted or delighted you have to be to give a book review. Do you write reviews, or pass along verbal recommendations to reading friends? What is your rating system? How much do reviews influence your reading selections?

And maybe I’ll give that seaweed another chance.