Quote:
Originally Posted by Rizla
I find rottentomatos totally useless for movie reviews. They seem to hate almost everything. I prefer to read the Amazon reviews and glean what I want.
In general, academics seem to enjoy books that most people don't. As such, I'm not sure what value their opinion is to the majority. Throw egoism into the mix and you may as well dismiss the literary snobocracy as irrelevant. Ultimately it's elitist, exclusive and self-reinforcing.
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Oh, the irony of dismissing snobbery in a snobby post.
I know you said in general but dismissing literary reviews by professionals and academics as egoistic and snobby is just too simplistic for me. Its so easy to classify people into groups, all neat and tidy. People are just way more complex than that. I wouldn't be surprised if many academics read and enjoyed Harry Potter and Tolkien, I know at least two for sure that have. And they read classic literature as well, and enjoy it.
My experience with RT is quite different. What's interesting to me is that, in general, the user reviews score higher than the ones from the professionals, especially for blockbuster/big budget flicks. If I like a genre, like SF for example, I tend to agree more with the public. If I watch something outside of my "normal taste", the flick has to be pretty damn good to impress me and then I find myself siding with the pros. I suspect its much the same with books.
Prestidigitweeze makes some very valid points. So does FJtorres. One thing we can all agree on, life is too short to read bad books. We all have our sources and methods to discover what we should read, be it Amazon, NYTBR, Goodreads, or just a friend with the same (AMAP) taste.