Saturday, September 22, 2007

Four stars!!

Do you ever read People magazine? I do. I subscribe to it. I love all that sort of trash.

Anyhow, People also has music, movie and book reviews. The movie and music reviews will often be low. I mean, I'm flipping through one issue right now and I see three music reviews that got only 2 and a half stars. But I've noticed that the book reviews are ALWAYS high. I can't remember ever seeing one lower than 3 stars. And I think I can only remember one that was 3. Usually they're 3 and a half or 4. And I noticed this a while ago, so I've made it a point to check every time I get a new issue (weekly). Are all books fan-freaking-tastic?? I find that hard to believe. I have read books. They are not all good.

I'm not sure exactly how to explain this phenomenon. The best I can come up with is that all writing looks like 4 star work compared to People? Not that I'm complaining, obviously.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you like people, you need to check out www.perezhilton.com and www.popsugar.com.

Anonymous said...

Your guess is probably not far off the mark.

Or perhaps, giving them the benefit of the doubt, it is the People editors' submarine effort to encourage People readers to read more books...by making all of those books seem like must-reads.

Or, cynically, maybe the publisher of People is also in book publishing and is exercising "synergy".

Karl Broman said...

It could also be that the mostly lame readers of People want to hear about every damned movie that's been released, but don't want to hear about books unless they're really good.

smurp said...

HA! I noticed that too, and wondered about it. One of the Sisters has a subscription to People (don't be shocked, just because we serve the poor doesn't mean we don't keep up on the lives of the rich and famous:).