I've found reviews by the average person (that's me) tend to be purely personal - based on tastes or views. Perhaps, we read within a narrow genre or even have a very specific like within a single genre. Whatever it is, a review is just a single person's view of what was read and will not always be shared by others.
I rate self-published authors with a little more forgiveness than I do traditionally published authors. I'm not expecting the next literary masterpiece.
5 stars - I could not put the book down or could not wait to get back to it again. If there were any errors, they were not enough to get in the way of my pure enjoyment of reading this book. This was a book that really kept my attention or kept my excitement up as I read. It may have been extremely quirky or just contained exciting facts, whatever it was, this is a book that will be reread.
4 stars - I loved the story. This book could have been a 5 star book, but somehow was not. It may have been formatting errors or spelling / grammatical errors that pulled me out of the story too many times. Maybe, there were a few places where character and actions / speech were off or something. Whatever it was, it kept me from automatically thinking it was a 5 star book. This was still a story that I loved reading and would read again.
3 stars - A fun read. It was a nice way to pass the time.
2 stars - I may not have even bothered to continue to read this and therefore would not be able to say more than just that.
1 star - Well, maybe it was a interesting title or the blurb sounded good.
Boomerang
on Nov. 20, 2009
Great fun from start to finish. The various antics of the characters had me laughing out loud as I visualized the situations. I loved following the old lady sisters, Amelia and Doreen (they were so real that I could almost hear their conversations) and Ted and Jerry (that guy had more stuff he was into than poor Ted could keep up with). If that wasn't enough, add in the alphabet soup of government agencies and “the clothing optional former onion festival queen". I had no idea how it was going to end and couldn't wait to find out. This will definitely be on my to-be-read-again list.
We Don’t Plummet Out of the Sky Anymore
on April 30, 2010
I almost passed this short story up. I was reloading my Sony Reader and decided to go ahead and place it in my “Next” Collection (books tagged for reading first).
It was a surprisingly good short story. I loved following along as Stan tried to make his decision about purchasing a new flying car, as I was reminded about the process I went through a few years ago (no, NOT a flying car!).
The characters of Stan and Mr. Withers were written well enough that I was able to get to know and like them (even care about them). I didn't want the story to end and would have liked to continue reading about their lives and the world they lived in.