But isn’t that what a reviewer is supposed to be? Am I your critic or simply someone who shares an opinion on a larger scale, after all it costs money to run this independent website? It would be easier to leave a comment on a bookstore’s site. It would be easier to only post on other sites. Follow someone else’s rules and set-up.
I don’t always trust those bookstore reviews. Too many times I’ve seen pettiness and a popularity contest on them. Oops, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
I don’t want to be a critic. I’m my own worse critic as it is. I want to talk books. The worlds and characters within them. I want to know how the author takes basic genres and storylines and turn them into something different from what anyone else could create.
Okay. I might be thrown off if you story is too far from the norm, but I might also be thrillingly shocked. Is that being a critic?
Writing this I’m thinking when I’m working as an editor, I’m probably being a critic, too. Isn’t a critic someone who dissects someone’s work? Questions what you are presenting. Do we ever think of a critic as saying anything other than the negative?
I don’t want to question an author’s work. I don’t want to grade an author’s ability. I want to talk books. I want to share my favourite pastime with you and that means talking with you about your and others’ books.
Everyone else can be a critic.