Reviewers of books should consider that they are writing for these readers too. Austin, or of George Eliot, but give me a good review of a new biography of either one, and I’ll learn something worth knowing in ten minutes. I am very unlikely ever to read a full-scale life of J. It tells us something we didn’t know-something worth knowing-but even in the case of a book of outstanding quality, something we are content to read one or two thousand words about rather than three or four hundred pages. Here a well-written review, by a critic perhaps as competent as the author on the book’s subject matter, serves as a concise tutorial. My own interests as a reader range across politics, history, philosophy, law, religion, literature, and science, and I routinely read reviews of new books in these areas even-or especially-when I know from the start that I do not expect ever to read the book being reviewed. The second reason I read a lot of book reviews-again, chiefly nonfiction-is to learn more about the world without reading books, which is much more time-consuming. We who write book reviews ourselves should bear in mind that we serve the interests of those who reject our judgments as much as those who embrace them. ![]() ![]() Hence a soundly constructed rave for a book may push me firmly away from any interest in reading it, and by the same token, a well-crafted attack on a book may persuade me that it is very much worth my time. A review that does what a review should do will supply an argument about the merits of the book, and an argument stands or falls on its merits, which, if they are perspicuous enough, we can judge for ourselves. And it is not simply a case of being attracted by the raves and repelled by the pans. A well-crafted review will attract or it will repel. First, I want to discover new books to read-and new ones to avoid wasting my time on, as well. For fiction, new or old, I am more inclined to trust the recommendations of friends than of strangers, since it is so much more a matter of taste than is nonfiction.īut I voraciously read nonfiction reviews-where judgment matters more than taste-for two reasons. The thought comes unbidden to mind: “Will anyone still read this book fifty or a hundred years hence? No? Then back to the books that already have endured.” It is possible that I am missing out on something contemporary that will have staying power-the first editions of some mid-twentieth-century novels my mother left me testify to the possibility-but the probability is remote. When I do read reviews of new novels-or begin to-I am usually brought up short by how dreary the books seem to be, like products of a recycling plant. I don’t read very many reviews of new fiction, partly because I have a great deal of catching up to do on authors I know I should have read by now and haven’t. For me, his living has been an enviable one-decades of writing about books, just as he pleases (or so it seems). The Post’s Michael Dirda, with his eclectic tastes from the demanding to the demotic, is a kind of éminence grise in my eyes. I scan the weekend book sections of our leading newspapers-the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post-for reviews of interest to me, and I try to keep up as well with notices elsewhere, from the New York Review of Books on the left to the Claremont Review of Books on the right. ![]() (More anon about what I mean by “good ones.”) I have long subscribed to various magazines and journals, and the “back of the book,” where books and other arts are reviewed, is usually where I turn first. That is to say, I read a great many of them, and I love the good ones.
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