Recently, I was reading the reviews for Kara Cooney's The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt on Goodreads since it's one of my current reads. There were so many negative reviews for the book in proportion to the overall number of reviews. Essentially, these reviews went on about the "hypocrisy" of Kara Cooney, especially in The Good Kings.
This got me thinking: how should we approach and view negative reviews? In my opinion, there are two main steps in how to approach negative reviews.
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| Kara Cooney's The Good Kings |
Step 1: Take them with a grain of salt, even if you don't end up reading the book.
Honestly, in the case of The Good Kings, most of the negative reviews seemed to come from people who ardently disagreed with Cooney. However, this may not always be the case. So it's good to take reviews with a grain of salt, especially if you don't read the book.
Step 2-A: Read the book yourself.
This is the best way to approach negative reviews, especially with viewing them. At the end of the book, do you agree? Do you disagree? Are you in the middle?
Step 2-B: Fact check.
This is important for history books, which is why I put it separately under 2. Once you read a history book, fact-check.
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