I run the library at a public high school (9-12, roughly ages 14-18 for the non-USians). Our school includes a Basic Media class, in which students produce a 10 minute news show for their peers each day. Said news show includes info about lunch menus, sports, upcoming school events, and whatever else the students want to cover.
One standing segment is the "Book of the Day." A student comes down during Basic Media class each day, chooses a book, and films a fifteen to twenty-second book review. The review is included in the next day's news show.
There are two or three students who rotate through doing the review. Since none of them are big readers, they typically ask me for advice or recommendations. I'm always happy to point them to books, talk to them about their contents, and so on. This results in most of the reviews being accurate, if simplistic. (How much can you really say about a book in 15 seconds?)
And then there's Gene.(FN1)
Gene never asks me for advice. He never asks what any book is about. He never reads the shelf cards that describe various books on display. He never reads the back cover blurb. Gene grabs a book off the shelf, reads the title and author, maybe flips through a few pages, and then runs with it. Gene has not read an entire book since finishing Dog Man: A Tale of Two Kitties in middle school.(FN2)
Gene's reviews are unintentionally HILARIOUS.
Here are just a few of my favorites so far:
"This book is about all the Dracula stuff that Dracula did in London before he got famous."
"I got roots, you got roots, you know everyone's got roots. Which is why this book is so great. It's about how those roots, like, make you who you are and change history."
"Persepolis is a place, or maybe it's a person."
"If you're like me and you're bad at math but you're good at drawings, you should check out this book."
"This is a book about the lies people tell and how they mess up your friend group."
"In here we got a whole lot of pride and prejudice, which means we got a whole lot of drama. Maybe that's why they made so many movies of this book even though nobody I asked knows what it's about."
"These handmaids, they get up to a lot of stuff. So come check out this book and see what these handmaids get up to."
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FN1 Name changed because he's a minor
FN2 Source: Gene.
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