{"id":25513,"date":"2016-10-06T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T07:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=25513"},"modified":"2016-10-06T00:01:14","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T07:01:14","slug":"authors-read-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/authors-read-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Authors Read Reviews of Their Books? I Did"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Should<\/a>
Should authors read reviews of their books? Some say, no way. Here, “Wrestling with God” is on sale at A Great Good Place for Books in Oakland, California. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Many a writer insists\u00a0that\u00a0no good can come of it\u00a0when authors read reviews of their\u00a0books. Some writers don’t want to risk getting their\u00a0feelings hurt. Others take the high road and insist that they write\u00a0for themselves, not for the critics, and\u00a0maybe not even\u00a0for their readers.<\/p>\n

What’s more, whenever authors read reviews of their books\u00a0— they often\u00a0make a point of never, ever commenting\u00a0publicly on\u00a0a review.<\/p>\n

Bad idea or not, I read my<\/a> reviews, and now I’m going to\u00a0risk commenting on one of them.<\/p>\n

The review I have in mind\u00a0was particularly\u00a0gratifying, not because it was positive, but because the writer\u00a0totally got what I was trying to do with Wrestling with God<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Should<\/a>
Religion and spirituality books offered at Book Passage in Marin county, California, include “Wrestling with God.” Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Five-Star Review for WWG<\/h5>\n

The reviewer,\u00a0Thomas H. Brennan, said this\u00a0in\u00a0his five-star (!) review<\/a>\u00a0for Clarion Foreword Reviews:\u00a0“The vivid stories in Wrestling with God<\/em> impart hope, insight, and inspiration for those who may be wrestling with their own faith\u2014or lack thereof.”<\/p>\n

I\u00a0like\u00a0the “lack thereof” part.<\/p>\n

For some folks, a lack of faith means that something is missing. That’s the way I felt when I embarked on the decade-long process that was the researching and writing of Wrestling with God<\/em>. I felt something was missing in my life. I longed for a\u00a0clear sense\u00a0that I mattered and that my life had meaning and value beyond simple survival and whatever creature comforts I could wrest for myself.<\/p>\n

In the end — after interviewing dozens of Americans over the years and tangling with age-old theological issues about the existence and nature of God\u00a0— I realized that I did not need certitude. I didn’t need religious faith in the traditional sense of the word. I was — I am — alive and conscious in\u00a0this particular moment in time, and that is miracle enough.<\/p>\n

When\u00a0Buddhists Are Buddhists<\/h5>\n

I also like Brennan’s droll observation that the voices recorded\u00a0in WWG sound authentic: “Buddhists sound like Buddhists,” he writes, “and nuns sound like nuns.”<\/p>\n

Founded<\/a>\u00a0in Traverse City, Michigan, by three\u00a0women writers and magazine staffers, Foreword Reviews specializes in covering\u00a0self-published books as well as books from independent, university and alternative presses. It’s a quarterly magazine sent to\u00a0librarians and booksellers. If you submit your book early enough in the book’s\u00a0publishing process, Foreword will consider reviewing it gratis. If you come late to the game, as I did, you pay a fee<\/a>\u00a0for a Clarion review;\u00a0there’s no guarantee that the review will be positive, but if you don’t like it, it doesn’t get published.<\/p>\n

Want to join the chorus and help WWG reach more readers? Go to Amazon and write your own review<\/a> — a couple words, a paragraph or two. Whatever you write, Amazon notices how many reviews a book gets and rates it accordingly. Don’t feel you have to give WWG all five stars. Four will do just fine, and so will three. As for those twos, ones and nones: a\u00a0bad review, believe it or not, is better than no review.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Should<\/a><\/p>\n

Should authors read reviews of their books? I’ve read mine, and I’ve got opinions about at least one of them. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[633,1794,34,1795,1796,1706,733,1797,1791,805,488,197,53],"class_list":["post-25513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-book-passage","tag-clarion","tag-dont-miss","tag-doubt","tag-faith","tag-foreword-reviews","tag-great-good-place-for-books","tag-miracles","tag-reviews","tag-somethingism","tag-the-writing-life","tag-the-writing-room-2","tag-wrestling-with-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}