This review of Beyond The Cover is brought to you by The Weblog Review blog and website reviews. Get your site reviewed within 4 days by using the 'For Faster Service' link on the left menu.
Beyond The Cover
One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2007 was to read two books a month. It’s October and I’ve read seven books. I think I fell behind a bit. The author of “Beyond the Cover” is up to 113 books that Crystal, the author, has read so far this year, and managed to post a review about each of them in this book review blog.
The first thing I saw when I arrived to this site was a eight option menu at the top of the screen that I dove right into. I need to know more about weblog writers before I start in with reading each post. I can’t decide if it’s morbid curiosity, or just a valid attempt at making some sort of connection with the author. Crystal provides the standard “about” section, and includes some great additions like book recommendations sorted alphabetically by title, a list of her favorite authors, and a helpful explanation to her rating system.
Aesthetically, this is a very appropriate design-choice for the blog’s focus. It’s a three-column layout, with images of books at the top of each side column. Aside from each book review, there’s a lot of extra information in the sidebars. Recent comments, archives by categories, a site search, and what’s becoming the popular additional of Google AdSense ads can be found while scrolling up and down the page. The author also provides several accommodating ways to sort through her reviews – by rating, by author, and by genre. The layout is somehow formatted incorrectly on a few of the different menu links, but it seems to be nothing more than a slight CSS error and easily fixable.
Crystal’s book reviews are why the blog exists and she’s been very consistent posting the reviews since March 2007, according to the archives. She keeps her reviews short and to the point, unlike my review of her weblog, and doesn’t do anything at all in the way of spoiling the book for future readers. She’s even received comments on the authors of some of the books she’s reviewed.
My biggest complaint, if you can even call it that, is the lack of inconvenience to read review after review. After reading one review, readers have to navigate back to a menu of different reviews instead of just going to the previous or next one.
Overall, this blog does what it has set out to do. I enjoyed reading the reviews, because Crystal got right to the point of each one. Anyone that’s looking for a new author to start reading or a new genre to explore will find this site both useful and enjoyable.
This site was reviewed on 2007-10-07 by Wendy.
They felt this site belonged in the Personal category.
Wendy felt that Beyond The Cover deserved a rating of 4.5.
Beyond the Cover presented me with an interesting thought. Was this just a new way to say "You can't judge a book by its cover?" Yes, yes it was. Again, this is a site with an easy premise and I would be confused if the site was anything other than something about books.
The design of the site is pretty tight. I love the fact that it is an original site. The author has cool drop down menus in the header and then gives the reader something at the end of the page. The site is a standard three column layout and uses the three columns like you would expect.
Being that this is a blog about books, more specifically book reviews, I expected the author to be well written which she is. I do have a problem with her reviews and some other posts in that she doesn't have the entire post on the main page. You have to "read more" in order to read the entire review. Sure you don't always want to read an entire review, but it is just something I do not like.
The other gripe I have is the archive system. The author has pretty much every archive system other than by month. We can find reviews by author, genre, rating, and series. If it wasn't for a "previous entries" link at the bottom of each page, this could be a nightmare.
Overall this site does what it says it does, and does it well. I cannot fault a site that achieves its goal. Because this site won't be good for all readers, I give it a 4 out of 5.
This site was reviewed on 2007-10-07 by Brent.
They felt this site belonged in the Entertainment category.
Brent felt that Beyond The Cover deserved a rating of 4.
2 reviewers gave Beyond The Cover an average rating of 4.2500
Site Stats
Site Category: Personal
Reader Rating: 0.0000 based on votes
Report URL
Cast your vote
Sorry you need to log in to vote.