Book Reviews

Book reviewing is an often underrated topic, especially considering how central books have been to the growth of e-commerce platforms like Amazon, which began as a book-selling site. Today, many book reviews are found directly under the book listings on these websites. However, reviews on e-commerce sites can be limited in scope, and the dominant audience on a particular platform can lead to biases or a loss of different perspectives.

When people search for specific books or popular genres (e.g., “best romance books” or “best thriller books”), one of the first sites that typically appears is Goodreads, founded in 2006. Goodreads was created for readers to share their favorite, or least favorite, books, write reviews, and discuss with other readers, creating mini-communities through these shared opinions. However, this form of reviewing and interacting within readers was not available until 2006, leaving some curiosity about how these communities would interact beforehand. One of the earlier spaces for book-related discussion is stored in Usenet, an archive of diverse online communities. Within Usenet newsgroups, a collection called “rec.arts.books.reviews” was dedicated to book reviews. This group provided a platform for readers to share structured reviews and maintain a focused, moderated book review community long before Goodreads became the widely recognized platform for book communities.

Like all communities and discourse platforms, this newsgroup was a moderated book review community. When this newsgroup was created, the very first “post” was that of the moderator, explicitly delineating what the “community guidelines” would be. These guidelines served as the foundation for the newsgroup’s discussions, stating what content was appropriate, while simultaneously, establishing the purpose of every review is, and the way that the review had to be insightful in any way, as stated on the post, simply saying that a book was good, is not something that is considered a review with substance. The moderator creates the environment by outlining the requirements for a valid review, which guarantees that the material includes insightful commentary and claims based on data and philosophical reasoning. Evaluations should be sent to the email addresses listed in the post, and the moderators will approve those that follow the rules. While it’s true that moderators’ subjective prejudices might affect how perceptive a review is, it’s also crucial to recognize that moderators actively promote a variety of thoughts. This newsgroup’s main goal is to give people a forum for a variety of concepts and philosophical interpretations so they may interact with the content, establish their own opinions, and maybe become interested in reading the original work.

One guideline that sets this newsgroup apart is the fact that discourse within reviews is not allowed.  For a lot of readers, the exchange of ideas, interpretations, and opinions is what keeps them engaged with the conversations, coming back and possibly adding more insight into a potential reader’s mind, encouraging them to read this book and create their ideas based on the discourse. An opportunity for further conversation or debate is lost, which takes away from the sense of community building. Users are referred to other newsgroups where they can debate, question, or disagree with a specific interpretation, but they are not allowed to do so in this newgroup. This could make it more difficult to explore different viewpoints on the same literature, which would turn off many potential readers who might be interested in returning often to follow the discussion of a book. This is something that through reading the different book reviews was evident. After reading some of the reviews, I started noticing a pattern within the names and the topics. A lot of the topics of the books that were reviewed were a lot of non-fiction type of literature and self-improvement books, there were occasionally fictional literature piece and philosophical literature, however, the majority consisted of more tangible, application-focused media. This is particularly interesting, as these books often have minimal documentation surrounding them, as they tend to be quite straightforward with their messaging, leaving little interpretation and space for discussion, as the authors’ intentions are very clear. Not only this but there was a pattern within the people who were writing. I started to notice a lot of names being repeated, which led me to believe that the newsgroup was not gaining much traction, it had around 5 or 6 continuous users who would come back and leave reviews, This possibly is a result of the lack of space for discussion and interpretations, as people looking for this would be in other newsgroups.

An aspect that is positively monitored within this newsgroup is the fact that for every review, there has to be documentation on the actual book, including the price, and and financial connections to the piece of media. This specific criteria was something positive in this forum as stating a financial connection to this work, influences perception on the work. This caused a point of interest, as there is no true way to know if someone is monetarily connected to the book, but it is a characteristic that is important to highlight. This is something that, is not regulated in the present time, as one is not obligated to reveal a financial connection to a book.

While forums like “rec.arts.books.reviews” concentrated on organized discussion, they did not provide the kind of space for dialogue that many readers looking for. By opening discussion and interaction, Goodreads and other present-day websites create a feeling of community through user interaction. It is easy to forget the rules that early platforms placed to assist assure evaluations’ integrity and depth, understanding the advantages and drawbacks of both frameworks provides an insightful understanding of how virtual communities mold literary discourse.