When applying for a lecturer position or RA position, just how highly are scholarly reviews regarded in terms of your publication history?

I'm in humanities and will definitely have 5 (peer-reviewd) book reviews published in scholarly journals by the time I finish this time next year. I hope to have at least 3 papers of my own work published by this time and obviously these are more important but I have no idea about book reviews.

Any opinions?!

Bottom of the pile alongside encyclopedia entries in social sciences at any rate - it's worth keeping on your cv as it shows that you are reasonably networked within the profession, but separate them from your proper publications. The only exception to this is for review essays that review a set of books on the same topic and are much lengthier. I would assume it's the same for humanities. Basically if it's not REF-able it doesn't count for anything much.

Thanks Bewildered. MY thoughts at this time is whether its a waste of time (or not) to be chasing up book reviews of texts in my field or using that time more wisely.

I wouldn't chase book reviews given you've done some already - if you have too many compared to actual publications, then you risk giving the impression that you don't understand what counts and doesn't count for much.