book reviews Archives | A.S. Akkalon

A summary of my foray into mega-popular books and what I learned from them.

Some time ago I set out to cleanse my palate by reading a collection of extremely successful books.

Books I read

From my original list I successfully read (links to my reviews):

The Maze Runner by James Dashner (11,198 reviews). Awful.
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins (57,762 reviews). Compelling.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (14,300 reviews). Delightful.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (43,944 reviews). Depressing.
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey (2,876 reviews). Entertaining.

Books I didn’t read

I failed to complete All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (27,246 reviews). Yes, it was a beautiful and poignant book about war and humanity and all that, it just didn’t interest me very much.

Continue reading “More mega-popular books I enjoyed reading”

You too should write a book review. Maybe not for this book.

I never used to understand people who wrote book reviews. You’ve already read the book, so writing a review isn’t going to help you decide whether to read it, and it’s an awful lot of effort.

But I’ve spent some time thinking about the matter, and I’ve concluded that there are five good reasons and two bad reasons to write a book review.

Good reasons to write a book review

1) You have an opinion

You have an opinion. In fact, you have many opinions. They’re all brilliant, and sharing them with the world will force everyone to acknowledge how brilliant you are. And, perhaps more importantly, how right you are.

Continue reading “Why you should write book reviews”