Can We Be Objective with our Favorite Books?

Hey Guys! How’s Life treating you? Hope you’re staying safe and sound among this craziness. I have for you today a Discussion post that was inspired by The Orangutan Librarian (more specifically by her post about her trying to be objective with some of her favorite books)

I read her post and I thought about many of my past reviews, and how they tend to be anything but objective… particularly if I enjoyed the book a lot — and let’s not even go there if it’s a favorite because that’s just a gush fest..

So, Can we truly be Objective with our favorite books?

My answer is simple, Yes we can, and No we chose not to. At least I do… It’s hilarious how I structured a book review when it comes to a 3 star book (quick reminder a 3 star is not a bad book it’s just a book with many issues just as I previously discussed on another post) 

I talk about what things I enjoyed about the characters, plot, setting, development.. and then I add what I believe can be problematic or where it could improve, what was missing… So, it could be considered a well-balanced review. However, when I’m discussing one of my favorite books … It all just goes out the window… I become the pushing machine… I’m just feels and no sense (literally) I just want everyone to read the book and love it as much as I do… It’s even hard to find words at times, which is probably why I don’t like to revisit my reviews very often (it’s embarrassing).

So, I very clearly chose to ignore any flaws that the books may have (that’s a blasphemous thought because my favorite books are perfect) and just gush about them.. Not objective at all… There’s the only exception and that might be if I know the book has dark themes and I just plain warn whoever wants to pick it up if it would be an uncomfortable read for them or not.

So, you see, we can be objective when reviewing books, but why would we want to? I mean there’s always someone out there that’s going to hate it for any number of reasons — writing style, trope, hate of the genre, not enough development… That’s just how things work and in my opinion if you chose to gush about your favorite books unapologetically ignoring any flaws they may have it’s just a way to balance the scale… 

You’re even helping fellow book bloggers because the potential reader will need to find more reviews to get a full picture of said books … see? you’re contributing with the community without even trying…

All kidding aside, I will recommend that when you’re in search of a book and you don’t want to go into it blind; Just go to the top reviews and to the lowest reviews… that will give you an ample look of the positive and the negative of what you want to read — like I mentioned before a way to balance the scale — It’s what I do and it hasn’t failed me yet.

What do you guys think? Can we be objective with our favorite books? Are you? Let me know in the comments below and if you want to help me keep on creating and making you at least smile a bit with my quirky posts just buy me a coffee (Ko-fi page) and support my work.

As Always

Happy Reading