Thursday, August 07, 2014

More Ponderings


 
 

Another short post.  Work is picking up again (thank goodness) but I still have time to ponder.  As mentioned before, I lost my blogging mojo and it recently started coming back and before I could manage to solve the forgotten password, I started getting a lot more active at Good Reads – kind of my pre-resume blogging fix.  I found this really neat feature.  If I gave book 4 or 5 stars, it gave me a list of friends to send a recommendation to.  Cool beans.  But with great power comes great responsibility.  I’m an author’s delight.  I enjoy a lot of what I read so I was getting this feature pop up quite a bit.  But I didn’t want to abuse it and send out a referral to everyone that pops up.  My son is a friend on Good Reads and while the thought of recommending some real hawt erotic novel is very tempting and every time I see his name I giggle, I don’t.  The most tempted I’ve been is with Transcendence but even then I resisted.  I don’t think he would appreciate the romance aspect as much as I did – heh, heh, heh.  A lot of the people that come up are technically friends but I haven’t had real interaction with them so I don’t want to send them to strangers.  So if anyone reading this has received a recommendation from Good Reads from me, I have sent it thoughtfully.

 

But even still I hesitate to do this.  I know, I know some of you long term readers are thinking. 

“Aren’t you the odd ball who emailed every romance reader you know and told them they HAD to read Broken Wing by Judith James?  And aren’t you the one who haunted blogs and at the least little opportunity told the blogger to read Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas?  And what about Ride the Fire by Pamela Clare??  That’s what we expect from you.!"

 
Yes, that was me and I did do that.  But even as I was doing it, I knew that not all readers would be struck as much as I am by some books.  While many may enjoy the books as much as I do, some may consider them a waste of time and of money and wonder to themselves ‘what’s the big deal?’  I don’t want to – and this is going to sound rather vain, but I don’t really mean it that way – lose my power of the recommendation by going full tilt and have more people than not think it a m’eh book.  Because then they would have wasted their money and I’d feel bad about it.  I know every book we pick up is a risk, even if it’s a well-loved author, but it’s kind of like a box of chocolates, we never know what we are going to get.
 

So this is really my rambling (cause that’s how I roll) way of wondering if you appreciate recommendations from fellow readers, pay no attention to rec’s or find them annoying.  I don’t seem to get that many – I send a lot more than I receive, but I do check them out to see how they appeal to me.  And sometimes I’ll get the book and sometimes not.

And if you do get a book based on someone else’s recommendation and it’s so bad you don’t know why they bothered, does it bother you?




7 comments:

Holly said...

I love getting recommendations from friends on Goodreads. Friends who I know are actually recommending a book to me because they read it and thought I might like it, or because you liked it so much you want others to read it, too.

I add emphasis there because I get a lot of recommendations from people I have never interacted with before. I'm fairly certain they click "select all" when asked who they'd like to recommend the book to. This has led me astray more times than I can count (or care to admit aloud).

I'm happy to get recommendations from those in my trust circle, any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Keep on sending them my way.

Rowena said...

I'm the same way as you. If a book resonates with me, then I'll tell everyone and shout my love from the rooftops if need be. I know they won't all love the book that I do but I tell them I love it anyway. I hope they don't hate me or get mad at me if they didn't like the book as much, cause I don't. Get mad, that is.

Some books are just not for everyone and that's okay because there are enough books out there for everyone to enjoy. And you should never stop pimping the books you love because it's one of my favorite things about readers. They're passionate about the books they love and I love that.

azteclady said...

You know, Kristie, it's your honest enthusiasm that gives weight to your recommendations.

You mention Broken Wing, which as you know didn't work nearly as well for me as it did for you, but still, it started a conversation. And how about The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, or the North and South Crusade? Without you, many many people online would not have gravitated towards these works, much to our detriment.

We readers always take a risk when we grab a book, whether because we like the author, because the blurb sold us on it, or because a trusted friend recommended it to us. We don't know, until we read it, how the story, the characters and the writing are going to resonate with us.

Like Holly and Rowena, I enjoy being on the receiving end of your recommendations--I may not read everything you suggest, but it's always interesting (and entertaining) to see what you like and why.

Brandy said...

I'm not a friend of yours on goodreads, but I don't see why recommending a book to friends can be a bad thing. I'm always on the lookout for new to me authors or books and having someone say- hey, I liked this one why don't you take a look- well, that wouldn't bother me at all.

Hilcia said...

I enjoy receiving recommendations from friends and always check out the books. I love receiving your recommendations and have a few of them in my TBR.

I rarely recommend books to other readers though. I've recommended books to friends, but very few -- mainly because I read other categories besides romance.

Wendy said...

I'm like Holly - I appreciate them when I know the reviews are genuine from people I regularly interact with.

What I love about your recommendations Kristie is that they're genuine. Yes, I am the girl who gave C grades to Broken Wing and Dreaming of You (but Ride the Fire got a B+!). Here's the thing though, I think we've all read glowing reviews for books, then read the books ourselves and thought WTF is wrong with that person who loved this crap? LOL But in the case of books we don't agree on *g*, I've always, always understood "why Kristie liked it." It's just sometimes our tastes take different forks in the road.

Oh, wait! One we both squee'ed about endlessly was Conor's Way by Laura Lee Guhrke! See, I don't give C grades to every book Kristie loves :)

nath said...

Well I picked up the Sawyer Bennett book because of your recommendation, Kristie :)

I guess it depends from whom the recommendation is. When it's from you, I don't mind because I know the rec is genuine :) Like everyone else, I don't really care about recommendations that were done by people with whom I've barely interact.

and LOL, I know you and I don't exactly have the same taste, so it's a risk I'm taking when I follow your suggestion, but it's a conscious decision :)

I personally don't send out rec. I figure people see what I read and check the grade I give it and if they want to give it a try, they do :P