The Extra Cool Group! (of people Michael is experimenting on) discussion

I didn't write reviews on goodreads for a long time, probably under ten. It was probably something about The Beatles.

Well, my review of Eragon is from the day after I joined, and that's the earliest I can find.

My first reviews date from December 2006. The very first is either Three Days to Never or Jar City.

I wrote some reviews of stuff on my livejournal before that, but I didn't really start writing reviews regularly until Goodreads.

My first review here http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

My first book review was some school assignment a long time ago. I'm sure it was terrible, boring, a strict summarization of the story, handwritten on wide-ruled paper, single-spaced, lots of mis-spellings, and as always, every word agonized over. The first piece of writing about a book I can distinctly remember was for A Scarlet Letter, maybe 9th grade. I got all poetical (by my standards) and the teacher read it aloud in class as a good example.

Yo Brian!

I'm gonna have to read Alfono's interview book and learn how to phrase questions properly. :)

My first book report was probably something like Uncle Tom's Cabin. I was made fun of big time for doing a book report on The Hobbit one year. I deserved every laugh I got.

Awesome story, Brian. Are you a lawyer?

I suck at thread starting. I meant first goodreads review. (Kicks, kicks, kicks self.) My face is sooooo red right now. :(

Hey don't be so hard on yourself Mariel. We wouldn't have gotten that good story from Brian if you hadn't interpretted the question the way you did ;)

Awww, not at all, Mariel! Memory lane!

My first goodreads review may have been this work of terse genius, http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Brian wrote: "Haha- no, I'm just hard to please. :)"

I didn't believe in Santa Claus when I was a kid because I found it totally ridiculous. But it was my own loss, since I never got presents. Our rationality is hurting us, Brian.

I fixed it because I really am deeply embarrassed by my inability to write/speak with sense. I should probably do something about my OTHER thread too.

My first book review on Goodreads was for Les Misérables. I joined GR in November '07 and mostly used it to catalogue my books, but when I read Les Mis in July '08 I realized a simple 5-star rating wouldn't be enough, so I wrote down some thoughts. It's now my second most popular review (for those who didn't ask, my War and Peace review is #1), so I guess it turned out ok.

I am terrified to see what my first review is. Hold on.

Weird. It wasn't as bad as I expected. For a book called the Awakeners, by Sherri Tepper.

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

How do you figure this out? Looking at add dates seems to show that my first review was for Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case -- I think I added the book when I started my account but added the (very brief) review later.

Well, if you look at a particular review you've written by clicking on its comments, there will be a little bit of grey text to the right of your star rating that gives the date the review was last edited, next to the 'edit' option.

I just went to my book list and sorted by 'date added' then went through the ones that had reviews until I found an early one. Maybe someone else has a better method.

Yeah, that's what I did, too. But as I said, I'm pretty sure that was not one of my first reviews.

Probably the real message here is that I am disorganized.

I did what Keely did. I'm pretty sure that was my first review, because I only added them as I read them in the beginning. I have a feeling I may have rewritten it at some point though - I know I didn't figure out how to make italics for forever, and I use them in the review.

I guess that's another question: how often do you go back and clean up reviews? Do you even bother? I go in sometimes and fix links and spelling errors. Mostly I don't bother though. I had a comment recently on one of my reviews that (mostly kindly) suggested I needed an editor. Sure, right, I do, and his points were valid. But it was an old review, and I'm not going to give it my time.

Well of course writers need editors, so it's lucky that we can afford to employ one to read all of our internet reviews based on the generous salary we all receive from GR. I mean, it's not like we'd be here if we weren't all professional writers accorded every aid and comfort.

"how often do you go back and clean up reviews?"

That is a good question. I guess I usually end up doing rewrites when someone comments on the review, I read it again to figure out what they are commenting about, and then realize that I'm not remotely happy with my review.

My first review is most likely The Year of Living Biblically.

I figured it out by going to my "read" bookshelf. At the top I clicked on Date Read to organize them from earliest to latest. Then I clicked on Shelf Settings and clicked the box next to Review, which shows the review in the list. Year of Living Biblically was the first with a review according to that ordering scheme. Hopefully I did it right.

mine were pretty unambitious reviews for The Cannibal and Giovanni's Room. i later updated the Cannibal review; i felt it deserved better. maybe some day Giovanni will get the same treatment. i used the phrase "poetic prose" in that one and it sort of embarrasses me. plus he is looking so forlorn, just sitting there in the corner, patiently awaiting an update. well maybe if he wasn't such a misogynist, i'd have more time for him!

I love 'Giovanni's Room.'

me too, it is a personal favorite. the writing...so beautiful!

so who is a mysogynist then?

i think the novel is beautiful but deeply problematic, namely because of its misogyny. it is a favorite novel but in a way a guilty favorite, because of that misogyny. the writing is amazing. the emotions and complicated thoughts of the male characters are sensitively portrayed. when reading it as a young queer, it really spoke to me, corny as that may sound. but i was also a political young queer, and the misogyny really stood out. the primary female character is described in really disturbing terms and functions only as a kind of adversary or a problem to be overcome. i would have appreciated her character to be as richly developed and as sympathetically portrayed as the two male characters. it was a disappointment, but i put it aside in favor of how much i responded to the novel's beauty. reading it more recently (in the past 5 years, not sure when) only made me realize how troubling and unnecessary the misogyny was, in such an otherwise moving and gorgeously written novel. it is a common enough problem in gay literature overall.

hmm, that's really interesting. I never saw it that way. Makes me want to reread it. I read it years ago, as a young expat (well, aged 26) living in Mexico City...and I absolutely loved it.

My first review http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

ha! Petra, I went to read and then vote and found I'd already voted on it. Think that was 'ages' ago...

nice review.

I think this is my first, so very brief:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Jessica wrote: "ha! Petra, I went to read and then vote and found I'd already voted on it. Think that was 'ages' ago...

nice review."

Thank you :-) :-) :-)
I'm not someone who is ever in the reviewers charts and I always get such a thrill when someone 'likes' a review.

This is my earliest book added that has a review:

Kiln People

I found it by going to the "All" shelf, adding a column for "Date Added", sorting it and scrolling down until I found a review.

(My shelves have a default column for reviews.)

Dunno--I started by transferring my reviews from my blog.

Well, it looks like this was my very first review on here. It could be worse, and later on the same day I wrote some that were much less informative.

Acts of the Apostles

There's a bit of a funny story behind this. I'd been wondering about the whole traditional vs self-publishing furore and was wandering around on the internet reading people's views. I landed on the site of one John F.X. Sundman who'd been flogging his book around geek/nerd/sci-fi techno-thriller get-togethers for TEN years. Wow. Anyway, I emailed him on some pretext or another, and ended up with an e-version of his book, and in return for his advice, promised I'd review his work.

Sadly, I don't think he thought much of the review, but I did manage to convince a few other people to buy his book. Apparently he has finally found a traditional publisher and it's due for re-release. The book is definitely worth a read, but skip my review.

My first review was for Scott Smith's The Ruins:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21...

I've written many more since then, some better, some worse, but that's my first.

when nietzsche wept:

This is one of my favorite books. It is not only a book about philosophy vs. psychology. It is about the fight to not give up on the mind, as Nietzsche denies constantly that their is anything wrong with him outside of his physical symptoms. This book help us to understand how to think about the people that we just can't understand.

Chronologically-speaking, the first book with a review on my shelf is I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. I initially wrote reviews on my blog, so I don't think I can find my actual first review ever written.

I'm going to brag on you, Danielle. You have written some fine, in-depth reviews and whatever you feel about the book comes out in every review--good, bad, or indifferent.

(Blushing) Thanks, Tressa! That's a very nice thing for you to say.

I think my first was a piece of Austen fan-fiction:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

It made me angry at reading something that I felt was wrong, that I had to vent my annoyance in a review.

Scribble wrote: "Acts of the Apostles

There's a bit of a funny story behind this. I'd been wondering about the whole traditional vs self-publishing furore and was wandering around on the internet reading people's..."

Hello,

Just saw this note. I liked your review, and I'm grateful for it. Sorry if I gave any other impression. I like all reviews as long as they're fair-minded, and yours certainly was. Of course the more glowing the review, and the more stars, the happier I am. But I'm very happy to get a thoughtful 3-star review like yours. I hope you'll check out my other books also.

Regards,

jrs