Every book written by June Summers, winner of the Booker Prize, has re

Now this seems to be a weird question to me.

I will also go with C .. Only reason to choose C is that I was able to eliminate others. I am not convinced with my answer.

And the answer is....

A. Correct: This answer indicates that the popularity of a book is not determined by the reviews it receives, but rather that the review is written in response to what is popular.

B. This answer makes the argument implausible, as it suggests that the Summers new book will not sell after having received poor reviews.

C. What happens after a book sells does not affect the plausibility of the argument, which is concerned with how well the book will sell.

D. The success of Summers' first book bears no implication on the likelihood that her latest book will become a best-seller.

E. Whether literary reviews tend to agree bears no implication on whether or not a book is likely to become a best-seller.

A. Prominent and widely-read publications, such as the New York Review of Books, base their selection of the subjects they review on contemporary readership trends.

B. Readers of the critical reviews are easily influenced by the articles they read and are likely to base their purchases on the advice of those they consider professional assessors.
>>> argument says despite ---> "despite initially having earned a rather tepid review in the New York Review". Yeah sales is helped ONLY IF the review is rave. OUT

C. It is often the case that when a reader takes a favorable view to the book he or she has recently read, the reader is more likely to search for and read reviews of the book.
>> Not necessary. People can go to library read reviews and put the book back in the shelf without buying the book OUT

D. The first book Summers wrote after graduating Summa Cum Laud from the creative writing program and Mr. Hartford University received first place in the Mt. Hartford Up-and-Coming-Authors Competition.
>> Irrelevant. OUT

E. Literary reviews around the world tend to vary little among publications despite the diversity of international interests and standards.
>> Out of scope. OUT

Hello,

I am not able to understand the reasoning behind option A.
A. Prominent and widely-read publications, such as the New York Review of Books, base their selection of the subjects they review on contemporary readership trends.

Its says that the selection of subjects ( not book) is based on what is popular. It never indicates that the review it has written is of a popular book or of a unpopular one.

Author's assumption should be that reviews shouldn't matter but that has not been indicated in the option.
Please clarify if I am wrong

"New York Review of Books" -------> this publication reviews books.

"contemporary readership trends" <--------- I think you missed this in your reasoning.

E.g Fashion is based on trend i.e. popular clothes.

Arguments?

Hi nusmavrik,

Thanks for your reply. I will just try to make myself a little more clearer.
I understand that its a publication that reviews books. But the point is, they review the books which have popular subjects. That book turns out to be a best seller or not is a different question altogether. So to say that publication reviews popular books is not correct in my opinion

I like your example.
But again you can have relative motion wrt plane. So subject might be popular but every book on that subject might not be a best seller. Other factors come in like author, publication etc etc.

Hope you get my point.

Your missing the point.

will in all likelihood be another best seller ---> likelihood. Does that rings?

Yeah probably you are right. I will agree on that considering there is no perfect answer and this sounds the best. Thnx man for taking pains to reply to my queries.

Hey asjankit

You can eliminate all this by POE. don't look for the perfect answer. because gmat is hideous and the tool will try to lower your score. Every time I get a correct answer, it tries to throw a more subtle question, trying to pull down my score.

When I looked at A, I didn't bother to defend the answer. If A is correct, then other choices should be wrong. So I started looking at other choices. B weakens the argument and C, D and E are Irrelevant.

A it is. A is subtle because that's how gmat will try to pull down your score.

I remember a quote from Matrix, the movie - Morpheus talking to Neo - in the mid of the fight

Morpheus: What are you waiting for? You're faster than this. Don't think you are, know you are. Come on. Stop trying to hit me and hit me.

So hit it hard !

All the best !

awesome question... i am getting stumped on these types of questions... Don't know what to call them... I couldnt figure out any relevant choice and ended up choosing E because I thought the only way th book could possibly become a best seller despite having received a tepid response in a review is to make the review not count...in other words downplay the "importance" of the review and its perceived relevance in the minds of readers... but after reading Sara's explanation I can see how A is more relevant --- if reviews are an indicator of what's popular... it would still sell ...where i got trapped was where it mentions that the review was TEPID...it completely took my focus away...

IMO C....
Before reading the option, I had prephased the assumption, which was like despite of having tepid review on publications, there is some other factor (past hit books) which will ensure that this book is also a hit..

Then I screened the options, but non satisfied.But to me B and C appeared closest.
I know C is not the perfect ans choice and got stumped by it. But I am not convinced why A is correct ?

A. Prominent and widely-read publications, such as the New York Review of Books, base their selection of the subjects they review on contemporary readership trends.
It says: The review are based on readership trends. This option kills the questions itself. If the readership is low, how can the book be hit (here I am making an assumption that low readership devoids the book of being called as hit )

Can someone solve the mystery please ......

Sorry I was watching this post. Thought to respond.

It says: The review are based on readership trends. This option kills the questions itself. If the readership is low, how can the book be hit (here I am making an assumption that low readership devoids the book of being called as hit ) ----------> absolutely NOT. The sales of the book guides the readership trend. So the readership trend should be based on the sales.

"Readership trend" means how popular the book is. If you read the stimulus you will know that the readership trend is not low - the INITIAL REVIEW was tepid.

Conclusion : Thus, her latest novel, despite initially having earned a rather tepid review in the New York Review of Books, will in all likelihood be another best seller, since Summers has managed to achieve such unparalleled popularity and an international reader base.
Look at C) It is often the case that when a reader takes a favorable view to the book he or she has recently read, the reader is more likely to search for and read reviews of the book.

How "Reading just the review" lowball the sales of June Summers' novel. Absolutely not. Didn;t you go to library read the book reviews without buying them? Ok out of context. But there is no premise which tell me about the causal relationship between "reading the reviews" and sales of the novel. although the passage does tells me that "initially" some people didn't think the book is great.

Look at option A : It tells me that there is causal relationship between the "sales of book" and the readership trend. Look at Sarai's explanation -

A. Correct: This answer indicates that the popularity of a book is not determined by the reviews it receives, but rather that the review is written in response to what is popular.

I think we can claim this to be one of the causal passage with future prediction.

In the passage itself it says B(Will in all likelihood be a bestseller) will not be an effect of A(Tepid review in New York Times).

As soon as we see this we start looking for another cause which gives us new information.

Prominent and widely-read publications, such as the New York Review of Books, base their selection of the subjects they review on contemporary readership trends(C)

We know that New York review has not given a good review to Summers book. We also know Summers has wide international readership and unparalleled popularity.

What we don't know is if its enough to make the current book a "LIKELY" bestseller.

"Likely" being a very weak word doesn't require a strong support. If we get a choice stating that C caused A and C might also cause B our assumption C will hold

Contemporary means present, so the present readership trends have led New Yorker to write the review.

Featuring in present readership trends, unparalleled popularity and international reader base, is it enough to make the book a bestseller- Maybe not but is it likely that book will become a bestseller- Yes.

B is a weakener

C says reader will read the review after he/she likes the book. Will reading the review after liking the book make the book to be a "likely best-seller", No. This is very tricky wording as it talks about taking a favorable view of the book.Here we need to understand that generic statements although can be assumption in this case generic statement doesn't lead to conclusion.

D First book is no where related to current book and its likelihood of becoming a bestseller

E. Varying reviews does not concern whether a book will become a bestseller

Interpretation of Stem -
June Summers books have been critically acclaimed from literary reviewers world over. Also she had five best sellers in the last decade, that is, her 5 books were read the most by readers in the past decade. But one literary reviewer, namely New York Review has given a review saying that the books are not that good as people claim it to be, but nothing has been said by the reviewer in bad terms of the book.

So we look at the answer choices in accordance to this -

(A) Prominent and widely-read publications, such as the New York Review of Books, base their selection of the subjects they review on contemporary readership trends.

Explanation - Here they are trying to say that the New York Reviewer only chooses books as subjects that are have modern and vast readership trends. Hence we can assume the reason for selecting June Summer's books were its popularity in the modern day books. Hence this statement helps us in assuming that the next book of June summers will be read by many even if previous books not that positively reviewed by New York reviewer.

(B). Readers of the critical reviews are easily influenced by the articles they read and are likely to base their purchases on the advice of those they consider professional assessors.

Explanation - This if anything can be considered as a weakener as according to this, people will discouraged from buying based on the reviews of the books.

(C). It is often the case that when a reader takes a favorable view to the book he or she has recently read, the reader is more likely to search for and read reviews of the book.

Explanation - One way to look at this is that if readers likes a book, he or she will may try to look for positive reviews of the books as the book to him is already favorable. But we can also assume that even if it is favorable to him, he might try find negative reviews of the book in order to prove his judgement of favoritism to be wrong. If we have two ways in an assumption we can never call it an assumption as it is one thing that has to be pointing one way only.

(D). The first book Summers wrote after graduating Summa Cum Laud from the creative writing program and Mr. Hartford University received first place in the Mt. Hartford Up-and-Coming-Authors Competition.

Explanation - Seems completely irrelevant as we are talking about book not john summers herself.

(E). Literary reviews around the world tend to vary little among publications despite the diversity of international interests and standards.

Explanation - This also seems irrelevant as it does not say anything about the book in specific.

Hence A

I chose answer E, thinking that it implied that overall reviews published are unrepresentative of actual interests of the reader.
Choice A says that publications choose popular topics only, which ,I thought, would have little bearing on the possibility of the book becoming popular.

Every book written by June Summers, winner of the Booker Prize, has received critical acclaim from literary reviewers the world over. Moreover, five of her novels have been on the best-seller list over the past decade. Thus, her latest novel, despite initially having earned a rather tepid review in the New York Review of Books, will in all likelihood be another best seller, since Summers has managed to achieve such unparalleled popularity and an international reader base.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument is based?
----------------------------------------------

1. Every book of this author got a critical acclaim.
2. 5 novels have been best-sellers over the last 10 years.
3. The latest novel got no so great review.
4. In spite of (3) author of the passage thinks, that this novel still will be a best seller.
Because of "such unparalleled popularity and an international reader base"
Why?

My prethinking.
It seems obvious that author of the passage thinks that the international base of readers and a popularity of June Summers among them is more important than a great critical review to a book to become best-seller.
So the assumption has to say something like this.

A. Prominent and widely-read publications, such as the New York Review of Books, base their selection of the subjects they review on contemporary readership trends.
Well. Sounds not bad. But not exactly what I expected. Keep it and move on

B. Readers of the critical reviews are easily influenced by the articles they read and are likely to base their purchases on the advice of those they consider professional assessors.
Yes, maybe, but nothing from our prethinking

C. It is often the case that when a reader takes a favorable view to the book he or she has recently read, the reader is more likely to search for and read reviews of the book.
Again, nothing from prethinking

D. The first book Summers wrote after graduating Summa Cum Laud from the creative writing program and Mr. Hartford University received first place in the Mt. Hartford Up-and-Coming-Authors Competition.
Same as in A and B. And it is not important at all. This option even does not give any link between readers and critical reviews.

E. Literary reviews around the world tend to vary little among publications despite the diversity of international interests and standards.
It is no important to us. Again, no link


So, we have to return to A. There is nothing here about great base of readers in comparison to critical reviews. But this option tells us that New York Review of Books chooses already popular books (books that can become best-sellers) and write revies on them. So the most important fact is not whether the review is great or so-so, but that the book has got its review! It suits us perfectly.

A.