Pagan Book Reviews

Opinions are like........

In our current age of electronic publishing and communication the opportunity for people to publically review books as well all sorts of things has grown exponentially which like most things has its pros and its cons. I think that a lot of us seldom make large or even medium purchases without researching the available reviews. While it is seldom that one will find any item that has only good reviews any reasonably intelligent person can make a reasonably intelligent decision about a purchase by researching the available reviews. Of course it is up to the person who is reading the review to decipher how intelligent the reviewer might be or if the way in which any particular reviewer might be using or misusing the item in question might have colored their review. Obviously the more reviews an item has received the easier it is to figure that out. I have often read reviews on things like vacuum cleaners where the majority of reviews are glowing or at least positive but there is always a certain percentage that gives the item a general fail; allowing for the normal percentage of idiots in the world that is totally understandable. One can generally assume that whoever wrote the bad review probably didn’t read the instructions or they simply used it for a purpose it was not intended for. 

Book reviews on the other hand are a funny thing; you see it’s pretty impossible to separate personal tastes and experiences out of the equation and when it comes to Pagan books being reviewed it gets really tricky. The greater Pagan community is a relatively small and definitely incestuous group. Certainly our numbers continue to grow but when compared with say.....non-Pagans we are definitely in the minority. This fact creates a rather difficult situation in regards to book reviews and recommendations. If a reviewer dislikes the author it is fairly hard to be completely objective when reviewing their book and as often as not the reviewer may not even know the author but be working on second or third hand information. For instance if the author has in some way real or imagined dissed the reviewer’s HP/HPS then the author must be a jerk and therefor whatever they write is no good. However when reading the review you will generally have no way of knowing that the review was biased before the book was even read.

Another sad but true issue I have seen in regards to Pagan book reviews is the jealousy factor. It seems that many in the Pagan community have egos with a fragility matched only by the voracity of their opinions. I have seen books given terrible reviews by people who have not even read the book simply because they are jealous of the author’s success.

Then there are the reviews that are colored by the reviewer’s personal type of Paganism to such an extent that they can’t see the value of the book to someone whose practice might be different. For instance one who practices Druidism might slam a book because it is too Wiccan which only okay if they actually state that for a Druid the book has little to offer due to it being written from a Wiccan perspective but if they just proceed to slam a book without making that distinction then whoever reads the review might have no clue.

Of course this works the other way too; sometimes reviewers will write glowing reviews on a book based more on the incestuous nature of our community than on true critical opinion. I have yet to see a glowing review of a book that includes the disclaimer that the author is the reviewer’s best friend, lover, coven mate, HP/HPS or whatever but I guarantee that at least some small percentage of glowing reviews are written by people who have some sort of connection to the author. It’s not that I don’t think people who share some sort of relationship should never review each others work but I do think it only fair that they state somewhere in the review that such a connection exists. That way when we read the review we can take that fact into consideration. Too omit this information seems disingenuous to me. 

Just to be clear, over the years I have seen all of these examples and many others which in my opinion are rather unethical and do a great disservice not only to the authors of the books being reviewed but also to the potential readers who might be making their decision on whether or not to purchase and read a book based on such an unfairly biased review.

Anyway, the reason for this whole diatribe is that I will be posting book reviews from time to time. Every now and then perhaps simply because I’ve been around a while or perhaps because I’ve read a book or two someone asks me to review a book. Then again sometimes I find a book on my own that I seem to have a strong opinion about…one way or the other. Sometimes very good books don’t get read near enough either because no one reviews them, the authors or publishers can’t afford to publicize their books properly or, and this is the real shame, sometimes a book is so good that certain “elders” don’t want you to read them because then you might see behind the curtain so to speak. I hope to bring some of those good books to the attention a few more people and in the process perhaps clear up some misconceptions in regards to the origins of things. 

What I will tell you is that when I do review a book I will make the appropriate disclaimers right up front. If I know the author I will tell you and if I find that I can’t possibly be objective because of my relationship to the author then I simply won’t review the book; in other words if I love ’em or I hate ‘em too much to be honest I simply won’t comment. I will do my best to be honest, clear and fair when reviewing a book; I understand all too well what goes into the writing of a book. I also know how influential the books we read can be on our practice, philosophy and traditions. With all this in mind I hope that some of you will find some value to these reviews.

Blessings

Raven Womack

Raven’s Flight

The Magickal Apothecary

www.ravensflight.net