 Welcome to church of the chair where we always try to look for the good even in the bad. I'm your host E and today I got some more unsolicited advice for you. This is a discussion video slash unsolicited advice video so there's not going to be any cuts unless I screw something up and I got to go back and fix it. But I wanted to give you a little insight to how I buy books and by the title of this video you can see I buy books solely based on negative reviews. Why should you do the same thing? Well it all depends on whether or not you actually want to change how you buy books. The reason why I only read negative reviews is a couple reasons. The first one and I believe the most important one is I find that the vast majority, hey Patrick, the vast majority of negative reviews are honest reviews. That is not to say that the majority of positive reviews are not honest but you tend to run along things like the hype train and you stumble across those tracks and you have no idea where you're going to end up. I always felt that I find the best information about a book in the negative reviews especially scorching scathing reviews that give almost entire breakdowns of what they didn't like about it. There's a couple things that will make me automatically buy a book. One of them is if the reviewer says I didn't understand a thing about the book and the reason for that is I like a challenge. If that person couldn't figure it out then hell yeah I want to try and figure it out so it's a bit of a challenge for me. The next thing is I didn't like any of the characters. If a reviewer says they don't like any of the characters I'm all over that like flies on funk because I love reading about unlikable people. I don't necessarily have to agree with them but I love to see their motivation especially if it's a believable motivation for what they're doing. Just throwing out an example here Thanos from Avengers what is it? I can't remember the first one but it's Avengers Endgame. You look at Thanos and you say okay we understand why he's doing it and then you start questioning if he's doing the right thing or the wrong thing. I like that thought process. I like diving into my brain and asking those hard questions and normally I end up on the side of no that's not right but I do like questioning those things. Another thing that will make me instantly buy the book too much foul language. I am an avid cusser myself. I am an aficionado of the curse word. I love if you've been to my live streams you know I have a filthy mouth and that's one of the things that I will look for. It's also one of the criticisms that I laugh at the most probably the only one that I truly laugh at because especially from an adult if you can't get past words like fuck shit whatever it might be if you can't get past that you got more problems than the book that you're reading. Other things that can be said in the book would be along the lines of it's completely unbelievable I'm here for fiction I don't want something believable I want something that is going to make me go well I haven't seen that before. Another thing would be this is too weird for me if I see something like that I will especially go and check out their other reviews especially on Goodreads I will go and check out the other reviews to see what they consider not to be weird but at the same time you're going to find a bunch of biases you're going to find people who say that Stephen King is too weird but like Dan Simmons or Dean Koons isn't weird at all that kind of thing certain people will willingly believe one thing and completely ignore their favorites that kind of thing. I would say do your research though when it comes to any review whether it be positive or negative definitely yeah definitely do your own research and go check out that reviewer's other reviews and that's not to say that I haven't contradicted myself in the past I 100% have because people change they you know different emotional states while you're reading books I've read a book that was one star when I first read it Bag of Bones by Stephen King a few years later I read it and it was five stars so if you want to know more about that go check out my how to reread books when you don't have the time I give some stuff there why you should read reread books and one of the reasons why I say you should reread books is because you're a different person even if you give just a couple of months between the rereads it can be an entirely different book based on your own mental stuff that's going on at that time the last thing I'll mention is it is and this one probably goes out more to authors than it does readers but the reviews that are negative that feel like a tax or that are overblown or the you know you think to yourself when you read them oh this is definitely you know that they got something against the author those are easy to tell the difference between those and honest reviews so I would say that if you're reading something if you're reading a review and you're going this person's batshit I'm sure there's other people out there who would agree with you but that doesn't mean that you have to complain about them but that is the reason why I only read negative reviews when I'm going to buy a book a book that you know I haven't read before it's mainly because I find them to be far more honest and people don't get stuck in their emotions as much this is what I found I'm not saying it's a rule they don't get stuck in their emotions as much in a negative review as they do a positive review when we love something we want to herald it we want to tell everyone and we tend to it out of proportion with a negative review unless you're a drama queen and there are quite a few out there and I've been one myself they tend to be more central where they will give you know bits and pieces of things that they did like followed by the stuff that they didn't so once again do your research find out what the what they reviewer prefers and see if that's your thing but negative reviews can be positive experiences especially for authors there are people like me exist I know this for a fact I also know it as an author that negative reviews sell books what I point to is one of my books got a did not finish review from a high ranking reviewer over on Good Reads and I sold 10,000 copies of that book over the next week because the reviewer brought up numerous things that she didn't like but that other people were looking for so yes negative reviews sell books but that's all the time that I have for you today I want to know if you guys have any experience with only reading the negative reviews or do you scour through the negatives and the positives or do you just go for the threes what do you guys look for so that's what I want to hear from you guys down there this is a discussion video remember so I'll be down there responding to you guys I want to know what you guys look for in reviews whether they positive negative sender of the road whatever they might be let me know all that stuff down there in the doobly-doo but until next time I'll help the chair