reviewing

Matthew Cheney writes an awesome blog post ruminating on various topics in book reviewing. I can't do it justice in any summary; go read it. Here's the subject headings in it: The Arrogance of Writing Anything for an Audience, The First Person (in book reviews), Intentions and Authors, and Lost Art. If you write about books or read a lot of reviews, this is a must-read.

"A well-structured review, positive or negative alike, can be very influential in shaping, or in certain cases re-shaping, a reader's take on a novel. However, a review that jumps all over the place and doesn't really engage the work at hand can muddy the waters a bit." My own reviews probably would earn an F from this guy, but then I don't claim my reviews are anything more than loose opinion.

The editors of Intelligent Life magazine list some of their favorite critics, including some who are online only. "Blake Morrison, Ian Jack and others name their favourite book critics. James Wood topped the list; John Updike was left out ..."

"Once I counted up the number of times New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani used the word “limn” since she started reviewing for that newspaper—the total was over 50."

Kassia Krozser writes a long and very thoughtful post on the "blog vs. newspaper" argument. Unlike most of the other entries in the war, this one i agree on wholeheartedly. "The repeated suggestions that bloggers are lesser critics smells like sour grapes."

"There were a whole bunch of layoffs in the newspaper book review business last year, this one especially, and it’s conceivable that I may be the only books editor hired by an alternative weekly in all of 2008. In many ways, becoming books editor in 2008 is the equivalent of opening a typewriter repair shop, or getting into the high-stakes world of cutting-edge cathode ray tube development."

In a Boston Globe blog, the blogger notes that a number of reviewers completely got an important plot point wrong about Alice Sebold's Almost Moon. She appears to have written a scene so unique that it's caused professional critics to blow a fuse and willfully misread it. Perhaps this desire to see things that aren't there explains all the bad reviews...

Howard Davis, chairman of the Man Booker Prize, used his time at the podium to say that reviewers are often too cozy with the authors of books. Meaning that they are often fellow authors who scratch each others backs and do not have sufficient distance to give anything but frothy praise for what they review.

My latest opinion piece, in which I disagree with John Updike's 6 rules for reviewing, arguing that my allegiance in writing reviews is to myself and to readers. Updike's rules would have the reviewer be "fair" to the author, which I think is a recipe for more crap.

Steve Weinberg shares the lessons he has learnt after 20 years of teaching reviewing