This TikTok account shares the best one-star reviews on Goodreads
People seem to enjoy literary criticism (or any criticism for that matter) almost as much as literature itself. Some of the oldest texts still available to humans have sections critiquing other texts of the time, for example, the Nāṭya Śāstra, a Sanskrit text on the performing arts from roughly 200 BCE has parts listing the advantages and disadvantages of similar texts.
Similarly, Aristotle and Plato both published texts criticizing ideas, works, and texts that they found distasteful. While most authors will write for the sake of writing, the copying and preservation of these works does indicate that deep down, most of us love reading about someone tearing something apart.
Of course, before the relatively modern era, literacy rates were so low that reading, let alone reading about reading was pretty uncommon. But as more and more people “learned their letters,” a review, of anything really, became a genre all to itself, as most people still preferred to know about a thing before they potentially spent hard-earned money on it. This popularity meant that reviews started to evolve from pure evaluations into a form of content in of itself.
One of the most popular critics, among his many claims to fame, was Jonathan Swift. Without knowing, many people might be at least familiar with not just one, but two of his portraits, which as memes are appropriately used to display someone's confusion and revulsion for something particularly bad. His works are still read today, a pretty clear sign that writers in particular can still learn about their craft by watching someone just dissect a text they have never seen before.
The internet has allowed for a democratization of reviews and literary criticism, for better or worse. Certainly, one disadvantage of the “classic” way to read reviews, in a magazine, for example, is that a single critic's taste might differ from yours and people are not infallible. But sites like Goodreads let people mix and match research, both seeing what specific people and even authors think, but also seeing the mass of data created by anonymous users.
At its inception, the site mostly functioned as a way for early internet users to actually find things to read, as digitalization and even just online bookstores massively increased the options for the average buyer. But options are useless if the person doesn’t know they exist. But, of course, even when one sees all the books out there, it’s important to have some way to figure out what you would like.
Now the site and its catalog are so large that Goodreads has its own “librarians” to curate, sort, and keep track of all the literature being added to it. While this is of little interest to the average user, it’s a pretty good representation of just how large the platform is these days, with over 50 million reviews and 90 million users as of 2019. Of higher interest to many users is the ability to follow verified author accounts and see what they are reading and reviewing.
