A Common Reader is . . .

. . . written by Tom Cunliffe, of East Sussex, England (to read more about me see my About page).

It consists of book reviews and more general articles about reading and currently receives over 10,000 unique visitors each month. So far 290 book reviews have been published.


My currently-reading shelf:
Tom Cunliffe's book recommendations, liked quotes, book clubs, book trivia, book lists (currently-reading shelf)


This website is archived for posterity in the British Library's UK Web Archive

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Review Policy

PLEASE NOTE – I AM NOT ACCEPTING REVIEW COPIES AT THE MOMENT.


Most book bloggers are surprised to find that publishers actually want to send them books for review.  At first this is a novel idea and seems to reduce the book-buying budget – free books!  But after a few months it begins to pall.  You feel a sense of obligation to review books you didn’t really go out of your way to acquire, and worse, when you really dislike a book you’ve been sent for free you don’t enjoy writing bad things about it.

Then there’s the problem of disposal – I am not someone who like to collect books, other than a select few which seemed life-changing at the time – fortunately Britain has a vast network of charity shops who are happy to receive books, even those “uncorrected proofs”.

However, I seem to have reached a fairly happy equilibrium where most of the review requests I receive are broadly in line with my reading tastes.   So, all I ask is that publishers wanting me to review their books first browse my site for a few minutes and get an idea of whether their book would be of interest to me.

Broadly, I like “literary fiction”, history of the 20th century, literary biography, current affairs and serious travel writing.  I am particularly interested in European fiction in translation (to English of course).  And I like to support that brave band of independent publishers, some of whom are listed to the left of these paragraphs.

What I definitely don’t want is anything at all about vampires, ghosts, mysticism, astrology, ancient wisdom, secret societies that govern the earth etc, etc.

Like many book bloggers I don’t usually write reviews of books I don’t like, mainly because life is too short to even finish reading them.  So, if I review your book, the chances are you’ll be pleased with the result.  And I will also copy it to Amazon UK where  my reviews appear with a little badge saying TOP 50 REVIEWER

In response to a question from a publisher I looked at my Google Analytics reports to see how many page views I get for a review.  My top ten reviews at 2 December 2011 were as follows:

Title         

 Views  

Av. time (mins:secs)

Hare With Amber Eyes

4946

4:45

The Slap

3641

5:20

Crimson Petal and the White

2398

3:44

Hundred Foot Journey (Morais)

1245

3:46

Man in the Wooden Hat (Gardam)

1225

4:13

Great House (Krauss)

1217

3:22

Novel Bookstore (Cosse)

1210

2:44

Thouand Autumns of Jacob Zoest

1118

3:36

Teach Us to Sit Still (Parks)

1108

4:45

Finkler Question (Jacobson)

1020

3:46

I think the average time figure shows that most people actually READ my reviews rather than just hitting and running.

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