Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme, created and hosted by Eternity Books, where we discuss certain topics, share our opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts! The topics are posted monthly, and you can even submit ideas for future topics, so be sure to check it out!

This week’s topic is: Do bloggers/reviewers have to review every book they read? (Submitted by Heran @ Be Frisky)

For the purposes of this question, I am going to specify that “review” means actually writing out a full review that you then post on your blog. I am not counting logging your star-rating on Goodreads and calling it a day, or even doing a monthly wrap up where you give those star ratings (I do both of these things, btw).

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Do Bloggers Have to Review Every Book They Read?

Absolutely not!! For starters, unless reviewing books on a blog is literally a requirement your job (if so, please tell me where to send my resume), you shouldn’t HAVE to do anything. Beyond that, on a personal level, if I reviewed EVERY book I read I would never have time to actually read! I mean, I’m at 163 books for the year, and I can barely handle one review a week most of the time.

Beyond that, I also tend not to review the books I am just meh about, at least not on my blog. I prefer to review the books I loved so I can share that love with other and encourage them to read them as well! Not to mention that writing a review for a book you don’t care for is not fun and often feels like a chore. No thanks. In fact, up until like this week, I didn’t even include a star rating in my posted reviews, because it seemed irrelevant when I was only reviewing books I loved. That’s not to say I will never post an unfavorable book review in the future, but it would definitely be under very unique circumstances. 

In the interest of transparency, I actually keep a book journal where I log and rate every single book I read, and then include a small paragraph of my thoughts. “That sounds an awful lot like a review, Megan” you say. Yesss, but keeping a three sentence record for myself is vastly different than writing a FULL review that will actually flesh out a whole Blog Post. ALSO, whenever I reread a book, I skip the whole paragraph part and just put down fun quotes.

Now, if you WANT to write a review for everything you read, have at it! I am not your father and therefore won’t tell you what to do. But no one should HAVE to, and that is my point! So, IN CONCLUSION, do what you want, love what you do, and have fun with it!

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What are your thoughts on the matter? Tell me in the comments below, and feel free to link your Let’s Talk Bookish post so I can check it out!