I’m probably going to post a few reviews of books I’ve been reading lately, perhaps of more things, but I figure there’s some relevant ground to cover before I bother reviewing anything… a sort ofinagural post summarizing my philosophy of reviewing.
 

It’s all too common a situation where I’m trying to determine whether or not I want to put my money on the line for something, and all of the reviews I can find of it are too brief to be useful, circumspect, throw a lot of terminology at me and in general seemto fail at the real “point” of a review. The point of a review is for me to be able to, via someone else’s experience, determine whether or not I’d like to do/buy whatever this person is reviewing. I usually just end up basing my decision off a product blurb and a starred rating somewhere.
 

So what IS the relevant information? Well, whether or not the person liked the product is, of course, relevant, but what really counts is that person’s perspective. Maybe I do need to know that book X was good because author Y has beautiful prose, but more than that, I need context for this statement, and so often I find it lacking.
 

So, in my efforts at reviewing, I’ll do my best to reveal my personal biases, and attempt to clearly communicate whether I didn’t like something because I just don’t like the style it’s in, or because I like the style but find it poorly done (which is a huge difference, when it comes time to pay.) I’ll try to say why I like something, and depending on the media, give some examples. If you find I’m looking for something similar to what you are, the review should be quite useful. If you find you’re looking for something I’m not, maybe it will, and maybe it won’t tell you something interesting. >_<