I decided to participate in the latest Bookworm Carnival, Surviving the Dog Days. There are some great links there to other book reviews and book blogs, so take a peek.
This morning I reviewed Lenny Rice and Brigid Callinan’s Fondue, and received another review book—a cookbook entirely focused on whole grain breads (yum!). I also very nearly put down Anderson’s novel “Second Genesis” around page 36 or so to take back to the library unfinished, but I decided that I owe it to my review blog readers to finish it and review it so they won’t make the mistake of reading it.
Does that make me generous or masochistic?
Wait, don’t answer that. I don’t wanna know.
I’m still trying to figure out some kind of policy about books I don’t want to finish. It seems unfair to the author to review a book without finishing it, even though the author will never see the review. It also seems like waste of time (when I barely have time to keep up with my reading!) to finish a crappy book. But your point is a good one, too. I don’t know. I’m still taking it case by case. So far I’ve reviewed two unfinished books, admitting I didn’t finish them. I’ve also not reviewed two unfinished books. And I’ve finished books I didn’t want to finish only if they were for challenges.
dew: Simply because I really make an effort to have the reviews over at my reviews blog be complete and relatively polished, I won’t review a book there that I haven’t finished; it just doesn’t feel right to me, although I can understand why someone else might handle that differently. If I was just chatting about it informally here, I wouldn’t mind giving my opinion on a book that I hadn’t finished as long as I noted that was the case (heh, like my comment in this post, in fact). I have on a couple of occasions been so utterly unable to finish a book that I didn’t end up reviewing it, but most of the time I can manage; it helps that I try to avoid beginning a book unless I have reason to think it’ll interest me in the first place, so not many of the books I pick up truly annoy me.
Part of the reason I can stand to finish this one, honestly, is because it’s fairly easy to read quickly; it isn’t as though it requires brain-power. I started it this morning and I’m at least 3/4 done.