Why Literature Matters In 2013

January 29, 2013 by 20 Comments
Image from Grammarly at Facebook

Image from Grammarly at Facebook

I was recently reading an interview with actor Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) in which he was asked about New Year’s resolutions, and I found his reply interesting:

“I’ve had the same resolutions for about 20 years, which is to read The Complete Works of Charles Dickens, and I’m only on about book No. 3.  I’m a terrible reader, which is a great shame because literature is the lifeblood of everything, really, in terms of inspiration and nourishment of the soul.”

I have to admit I’ve had a similar resolution over the years—not to read Dickens, who is not my favorite author by a long shot—but to read my way through Dante.  I’ve never made it, even though I have good translations.  They sit on a shelf and mock me annually.  Someday.

But more to the point of this post, what struck me about that quote was Bonneville’s assertion that literature “is the lifeblood of everything, really, in terms of inspiration and nourishment of the soul.”

I have the dreaded B.A. in English.  And even 30 years ago, people asked “But what will you do with it?”  The answer back then was “anything I want.”  And I have done a lot of interesting things: I’ve taught, I’ve worked as a technical writer, I’ve done a little (very little) ad writing and copy editing.  I’ve written countless resumes for people, published poems, written two unpublished novels (just to see if I could, you know) and been paid to give my opinions on books.  And that’s just me. I know plenty of people with the same degree who do a variety of fascinating jobs—several of them own very successful businesses, for example, many are active in politics, and one develops and writes video games.  My co-conspirator here wrangles spreadsheets for her day job.  Another friend has an executive position in a bank.  A young woman I know is now teaching English at a Chinese school, and now that her Mandarin has improved significantly, she and her husband also run a small translating business on the side.  Really, the possibilities are endless.

So when people want to know if there’s really any value to studying literature these days, my kneejerk response is “of course.”  You learn things as an English major that may not be quite the same as, say, what you’d learn in an engineering class, but you come out with quite a useful little toolkit.  Studying literature teaches you about people, for one thing—you learn how to analyze motivations and fears and hopes.  You also learn to think critically, to connect-the-dots, to figure things out.  You learn how to research, to argue, to defend your thoughts, to read between the lines, to synthesize information. You also write a lot of papers when you study literature—a LOT of papers—so you also learn how to write effectively and coherently, which is a most useful skill.  Altogether, you come out knowing a lot about Dickens and Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf’s writing, sure, but you know way more than that.

You have a fundamental grasp of the human experience through the ages.  Literature spans so many other disciplines–the social sciences, history, philosophy, theology, etc.—that you come out prepared for anything life throws at you.  And that includes learning any special skill that you might need in a job, which is important because people will insist on putting some sort of valuation on a degree.  So let’s do that.  Literature–and I’d argue, the humanities in general–is a valuable field of study that does provide you with a skill set that translates into earning a living.  Because you don’t just learn about books, you learn how to research, to synthesize, to present an effective argument, to think.  And if you know how to think, you are a few steps from being able to do almost anything (I feel compelled to qualify that statement with “almost” because truthfully, you probably won’t know how to build a race car or a nuclear reactor, although you’d have the skills to try and figure it out if you were so inclined).

We live in a world now that is vastly different from the one I was launched into 30 years ago when I graduated with my BA in English.  Back then, personal computers were vastly expensive and rarely owned by the average person, CDs were a year or two away from being common, and digital media was completely unheard of–TVs were still analog, and people still wrote actual handwritten letters instead of logging into Facebook or streaming their favorite programs on Netflix.  Research was not a mouse click away, but required hours spent in libraries with books and microfilm.  But we have all this lovely technology today precisely because people still need to think creatively.  And it will continue to evolve for precisely that reason.

There’s a reason colleges and universities require general education courses across a wide variety of disciplines.  Being exposed to other areas of study outside one’s own declared field of interests enhances learning.  When I taught, I had engineering students who actually resented being forced to take a course in technical writing by their departments.  They seemed to think they’d have no use for such a thing.  I had science majors who didn’t understand why they were asked to take a basic literature course—what does MacBeth or Animal Farm have to do Chemistry or Biology, they’d argue?

I probably don’t need to point out that my answer to that question was “everything.”  But I always made them figure it out.  That was pretty much the whole point, after all.

I know I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but I think that studying literature is even more valuable today than ever.  We live in a world where people change jobs all the time, where versatility is required.  We also live in a world where advances in technology and science happen so rapidly that processing those developments requires a nimble mind capable of understanding such things.  And not to get all political on you, but we also live in a society where, I would argue, the ability to think and reason for oneself is vital—otherwise, our personal philosophies become parroted talking points, not strongly held convictions.

And finally, it was my personal pleasure to introduce works of fiction to people who’d seldom read a book prior to taking my literature class.  Many of them went on to investigate other works by an author who’d struck a chord with them, and I had more than one 18 year old say, “I never realized that books had all these ideas in them!”  Indeed they do—from Shakespeare to Stephen King to romance novels and mystery fiction, they do indeed have ideas in them that make the reader think, to consider, to discard or to keep.  Turning someone into a lifelong reader was one of the greatest pleasures I ever got when teaching, because I knew I was also turning them into a lifelong thinker.  And honestly, as long as we have people who can think, we’ll be okay.

Filed Under: General, Opinion Tagged With: ,

Wherein Donna Is Dragged Into The 21st Century.

January 17, 2013 by 12 Comments

So here’s the thing: I happily confess that I am a technological Luddite.  I don’t like change. I don’t have a smartphone—well, I do, kind of (it’s sort of an average intelligence phone, really) but aside from texting now and then and using it for what a phone was actually invented for—talking to other people—it mostly sits silently somewhere near me.  I never use it to access the internet, although it’s capable of that if I want to pay for it, but I don’t.  I have a computer for that.  I don’t own an iPod (to be fair, I’d likely break that).  I am also perfectly content to function well behind the times–no streaming Netflix for me, or downloading apps.  I’m telling you all of this to offer some sort of explanation for why it’s taken me this long to acquire an e-reader.

I should also explain up front that I still wouldn’t have one if my co-blogger here hadn’t offered to sell me her old Kindle for a reasonable price.  I am also, I admit, thrifty.  What some people view as necessities I view as luxuries.  I really can’t help it, and I’m sure there’s some pathological reason for it.  But mostly it’s that for years now I couldn’t bring myself to spend that much money on something I wasn’t sure I’d even like.  And that I was, honestly, kind of afraid of because things like that are so alien to me, really.  Plus there’s the idea of spending a lot of money on something I realistically might not be able to figure out how to use (laugh if you will, but to me, technology is like magic.  I have no idea how my computer works, for example.  I push a button every morning and confidently expect it to turn on.  If it doesn’t, I panic.  I also have no idea how electricity works, and I suspect I’m happier not knowing these things). I am also a bit of a klutz, so there was the distinct possiblity that I’d break something I paid a lot of money for and be unhappy in several different ways.  Natalie has assured me for years, however, that I would be able to cope with a Kindle and encouraged me.  So I finally relented.

Yes.  I have lost my Kindle Virginity.

When it arrived, I took it out of the packaging and eyeballed it like a rattlesnake.  I figured out how to wake it up fairly quickly, and paged through the user’s guide, mainly to figure out what all the buttons were for and how to set it up with my Amazon account.  Then I put it to sleep, put it in its case, and picked up the paperback I was rereading.  I’d dipped my toe into the lake, but I wasn’t up to wading into it just yet.

Later, my husband convinced me to buy a book.  “Go ahead, just one,” he encouraged.  So I figured out how to do that and pre-ordered the new Peter Robinson mystery (review forthcoming!).  The next morning, it was magically there.  Natalie gifted me with the Courtney Milan trilogy she’s been raving about here, and I clicked the link and watched them magically appear.

And I have to admit that it was cool.  And easy.  I can see it being a problem, though.  Because it was too easy to just buy a book and watch it appear magically on my Kindle.  I know me.  “Oh, I want to read this” and Poof!  Magic. And a ginormous credit card bill.  Books are like crack to me, and my willpower when I have access to them and to a credit card is going to take a pretty severe beating, I suspect.  It’s one of the reasons why I’m glad the nearest bookstore to me is half an hour away.  Amazon, on the other hand, is not–and it has a lot to answer for in terms of my monthly bills.

Anyway.  For three days I kept looking at it now and then.  I’d wake it up, look at the Robinson book sitting there, begging to be read, and put it back to sleep in its case.  Yes.  I was afraid of it–and afraid that I’d hate it and I spent money on this thing and this book and I’m going to hate it so much and I’ll have to go buy another copy of the book and I wasted all this money and OMG I am SO frigging neurotic.  In my mind, if I never used it, I’d never know I hated it, if I did hate it.  And so forth.  My husband kept saying “have you started yet?” and I’d just sadly shake my head, but I knew eventually I was going to have deal with my stupid nuttiness, so late last week I finally got over myself, woke up the Kindle, and started to actually read on it.

And miraculously, I did not hate it.  I actually knew I probably wouldn’t hate it, but my mind works in ways I can’t explain and, like electricity, I really think I’m better off not understanding how it works.  Ignorance is bliss and all that. So I did like it.  I found navigating things easier than I expected.  I figured out how to make collections on it.  How to bookmark, highlight, all that stuff–really, it was made for a techno-idiot like me.  I have no idea what the hell I was so afraid of.  I feel stupid.

For me, there are plusses and minuses.  On the plus side, I can adjust the font to a size that suits me.  My eyesight is not good and is getting worse as time goes on.  Between the ability to adjust the font and the good quality of the contrast on the screen, I found actually reading from the screen to be much easier than from a book, and I appreciated for the first time just how much I was struggling with the smaller print in paperbacks.  I  managed to finish a 400+ page book much faster than I have been able to recently, which I attribute to being able to read it more easily.  Another plus is that I will no longer have to wait until a.) I can get to a bookstore, b.) I can get to the library (and hope they have it), and c.) for Amazon to mail it.  Magic.  Plus, my library does have an e-book borrowing program that I intend to investigate just as soon as I have some free time and which I fully intend to take advantage of.

I have mixed feelings about other things, though.  For one thing, the book I read did not come with page numbers, and I was surprised at how disconcerting I found that.  And I’m a little OCD about things, and so my brain kept looking at that bar that graphs the percentage of the book you’ve read and trying to do the math to turn it into a page number.  Tragically, math is not one of my strengths.  I can barely add and subtract.  I suppose I could look at this as an opportunity to improve my calculating skills, but honestly I’d rather have the page numbers.  Because not only do I have to figure out that if I’m 25% of the way through a 412 page book that that equals 103 pages, I then have to subtract 103 from 412 to figure out how many more pages I have left to enjoy, approximately.  I say approximately because I am unlikely to actually get that number right because–bad at math.  I can live with a ballpark figure, but frankly, that’s more math than I really want to be doing in my head.  It takes time away from actually reading the book.  Seriously, I am told that not all books lack page numbers in the Kindle editions, and it’s hardly a deal breaker, but for me, it was annoying.  I’m also accepting of the fact that not everyone is as neurotic about these things as I am and is therefore not likely to be so bothered by something like that.

I also found it a little awkward to hold, initially.  I suppose it really depends on one’s Usual Book Grasp for reading.  My personal grasp involves resting the book against the back of my hand with my thumb across the center along the bottom of the pages to hold them open.  My Kindle has a keyboard, and I kept accidentally sticking my thumb on the “home” button or the space bar.  It took me a while to find a comfortable Kindle Hold (I’d tell you how long it took in page numbers, but I’d have to do more math, sorry), and even then I kept shifting it around.  Somewhere around 80% in (83 pages left to enjoy!) I finally stopped fidgeting with it.  But I was always aware that while I was reading a book, I was not actually holding a book, but a book delivery system.  Which is fine.  I’m not that neurotic.  Maybe.

I’d also tell you what I think of putting an electronic device to sleep (I felt like I should tuck it up with a warm blankey and a soft toy) and waking it up (“Kindle, Kiiiiindle, wake up Kindle…”) but again, you really don’t need to know just how neurotic I am.  I’ve already given you a good idea of that.

I will say this: I’m probably always going to prefer physical books to the Kindle.  There is an irreplaceable tactile experience involved with a well-worn and well-loved paperback, and to me, there is little more exciting than the smell of a brand new book. I know it’s just me, really.  And I will use this, a lot, honestly.  It’s convenient, easy to operate, and easy to read. But as an exclusive method for reading, for me, it’s just not going to work, because it’s really not the same experience for me.

That’s not to say it’s a bad one.  It’s just a different experience.  And likely it will be good for me too.  I mean, I can’t stay la-la-ing away in 1985 forever, no matter how much I’d like to.

Filed Under: General, Opinion Tagged With: , ,

Quirks, I have them

December 18, 2012 by 11 Comments

I surely cannot be the only person out there who has odd reading habits.

Can I?

One of 88 Christies I own

One of 88 Christies I own

F’rinstance.  Like most heavy readers, I have a TBR pile.  I cannot read the last book in it.  I must have an unread book available because if I don’t, there won’t be any unread books.  I know that probably makes no sense, but I hate the idea of not having a book I haven’t read available.  So I never read the book on the bottom of that pile (for years, that book was Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, until one day I realized I had two unread books and that one had been sitting around for three years and I was never going to read it—it was donated to my local library).  The current book holding the “only unread book” spot is Jasper Fforde’s The Woman Who Died a Lot.

Also, I develop obsessions about writers and have to own everything they’ve ever written.  This would explain why I own 88 Agatha Christie books, for example.  This also extends to books written about them, which explains why I own at least 6 scholarly works about her and another 10 or so about Dorothy L. Sayers.  Because it also extends to things like histories of the time period, other writers of that time period, things like that.  Which explains how I got interested in Sayers, own everything Ngaio Marsh wrote, and own numerous historical works about people and events from England in the 1920’s and 30’s.  Because when I do something, I am thorough.

The first of my 33 Sayers books

The first of my 33 Sayers books

I get so attached to books I can’t get rid of them, even if I know I’m never ever going to reread them.  I still own all of the Nancy Drew books I had when I was a kid.  Like, 60+ of them.  I cannot bring myself to get rid of them.  I was very fond of Nancy Drew when I was younger.  I have biographies that I’m never likely to reread, but I just can’t give them away.  Every once in a while we simply have to prune, and it is painful and nearly impossible for me to do it.  And I feel sad for days after.  Like I’ve given away friends.

My books are shelved as befits someone as obsessed with order as I am.  All mysteries are in one bookcase (except my Sayers collection, which did not fit and is housed in its own small bookcase with my Nancy Drew books—because that juxtaposition amuses me), all fantasy and science fiction on another.  Classics and non-fiction on another.  Children’s books have their own place.  Furthermore, those books are shelved in publication order by author.  And I get cross if other people here borrow them and don’t put them back in the right place.  And it bugs me when I run out of room on a shelf and they have to run over onto the next shelf.  The horror, I tell you.  I then sit down, take everything off the case, and rearrange it so all of an author’s books are together.  Because they have to be.  If necessary and possible, I’ll double stack them before I’ll let them run over to the next shelf.

The first Bujold I read

The first Bujold I read

I don’t have an issue with reading a new series out of order, but when I finish, I’ll go back and reread it in order just because I have to get the timeline straight in my head.  Just as an example, when I first started reading Bujold, I started with A Civil Campaign because it was simply the only one of her books at that time I could find (it was still fairly new back then—just out in paperback).  I read the whole Miles saga completely out of order as a result as I tracked copies down over the following six months.  Then once I had finally assembled them all, I sat down and reread them in order.  Now it may have made more sense to get all the books first (I should be clear here that my library didn’t have them.  Small town…) and then read them in order, and it surprises me, given my need for order in my life, that I don’t do that.  I can only put it down to my desire to Read All The Things trumping my desire to Organize All The Things.

And I cannot stop reading in the middle of a chapter, either.  I can’t just say, “Let me finish this page.”  It has to be “Let me finish my chapter.”

Do you have quirks like this?  Share them in the comments if you’re willing.  It’ll help me feel like I’m not alone.

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , , , , ,

Top Books of 2012

December 10, 2012 by 3 Comments
Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore

Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore

Like a lot of people who do this whole book blogging thing, I read a lot. Especially since I got an e-reader. This year has been no exception–and I have read way more books for fun this year than I have in a really long time. I just did an extremely rough count and it’s somewhere around 115 books and the year’s not over yet (last year I managed 130 books)!

One thing I always enjoyed doing when I was with RT was compiling my list of books for the Reviewer’s Choice Awards–I used to play a game with myself to see how well my selections matched up with the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy lists. I generally did pretty well, if I can toot my horn a little bit (last year was my best ever, go me!).

So, without further ado, in no particular order are my favorite books of 2012. Okay, they’re kind of in the order they were read. And some of these I read last year, but they were published this year so they totally count. If I kept it to books I read this year that I liked we would be here for EVEN LONGER.

  • Range of Ghosts, Elizabeth Bear  Really interesting secondary world fantasy with two engaging and completely different protagonists, including a princess who gives up her ability to bear children in exchange for becoming a magician.
  • Lessons after Dark, Isabel Cooper This is direct sequel to 2011′s No Proper Lady, which I also loved. It’s set in a quasi-Victorian world where magic and demons are real. The world building is amazing in this series. Also, no squidgy consent issues.
  • A Lady Awakened, Cecilia Grant I loved this book so much. Martha is uptight and repressed and needs to get pregnant so she won’t lose her home. So she basically hires her neighbor to have sex with her–Theo, the disgraced son of a nobleman. There is a lot of bad sex. Really, really bad uptight repressed refusing to enjoy it sex. And it’s great–because as Martha comes to respect and like Theo, the sex slowly gets better until she lets him in completely and they have one of the most emotionally satisfying encounters I think I have ever read. Also, they come to like and respect each other over estate management. So great.
  • Glamour in Glass, Mary Robinette Kowal This is the second book in Kowal’s Regency-set fantasy series and it’s nearly as wonderful as the first (Shades of Milk and Honey). In this one, Jane and Vincent are newly married and Vincent’s being a total butt and not letting Jane know what he’s up to and then she saves him and pays a terrible price for doing so. It’s a great examination of what a marriage of equals really is and how internal and unrecognized sexism can interfere.
  • A Week to be Wicked, Tessa Dare FRANCINE FOREVER. Ahem. Minerva Highwood needs to get to Scotland to present on a fossil (which she has named Francine). She talks Colin Sandhurst into accompanying her and hijinks ensue. Dare is great at weaving in a very serious story amongst all the hijinks and I found this to be an exceedingly satisfying read.
  • Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore This book. Oh, this book. There’s just no way I can truly do this book justice. It is a long complicated story about forgiveness and healing and resolution even in the face of seemingly insurmountable barriers. It’s just a gorgeous book and I can’t recommend it highly enough. After you read Graceling and Fire, that is.
  • The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun, N.K. Jemisin This is a duology that takes on a lot of complicated ideas while telling a fantastic story. Features ninja priests who will kill you in your sleep! And the cost of corruption and colonialism and the insidious evil of sexual abuse. Compelling stuff.
  • Redshirts, John Scalzi I think this book is going to be on a lot of lists this year and next–it is on one hand a hilarious deconstruction of well-worn science fiction tropes, especially those on television shows but on the other hand, it’s also a metafictional meditation on life and meaning. The third coda totally made me cry.
  • Queen’s Hunt, Beth Bernobich This is the second book in Bernobich’s River of Souls series. Ilse is awesome. Raul is awesome. This is very much a second book, though, so read Passion Play first.
  • Sharps, K.J. Parker Political fantasy with an ensemble cast. No magic, just fencing and political machinations. I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed this book and Parker’s on my list of writers whose work of which I would like to read more. (I wish I could end sentences with a preposition. I am incapable. I’ve tried.)
  • Whispers Underground, Ben Aaronovitch Hilarious and read-out-loud funny. These are basically police procedurals with magic. For me, apart from the humor, the best thing about them is that Peter doesn’t level up at the end of each book. At the end of this book, he still only knows four puny spells. The setting is modern London which is full of all sorts of different kinds of people. It’s great.
  • Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, Lois McMaster Bujold I loved this book. I will read just about anything Bujold writes and I was so excited when I heard she was finally going to write an Ivan book and I wasn’t the least bit disappointed. Also, I want more about the Simon and Alys show. (Radish-y review.)
  • Tempting the Bride, Sherry Thomas It’s a hate-marriage-of-convenience book! Where the heroine gets kicked in the head by a horse and develops amnesia! The premise is completely insane and yet it works. (Radish-y review.)
  • Ride with Me, Ruthie Knox Short but emotionally satisfying–the relationship between Tom and Lexie develops as they ride cross-country. They each have a history and baggage and are prickly in their own way. As I read this, I kept thinking about the idea of grace. (Radish-y review.)

I don’t think this year was a really great year for books, but looking over this list, it wasn’t half-bad, either. There are definitely a few standouts and I’m looking forward to next year.

Filed Under: Fantasy, Opinion, Romance, Science Fiction Tagged With: , , , , ,

A Reviewer’s Manifesto

October 17, 2012 by 18 Comments
Stack of thin flexicover books on reflective table

photo credit: Horia Varlan, licensed under Creative Commons

Recently, my husband and I went to a small SF convention in our area. We had a pretty good time and met some cool people and I talked John Scalzi into buying a Loretta Chase novel (Mr. Impossible-the-best-romance-novel-ever). So as far as I’m concerned, the weekend was more or less a success. Frankly, I was amazed that he actually listened to my recommendation considering what I gave him the last time our paths crossed at a convention. But hey, the more people I can talk into the wonder that is Mr. Impossible, the happier I am.

One of the panels we attended was about reviewing and the purpose of reviews. This being extremely relevant to my interests, I was looking forward to a discussion about the process and hoping to pick up a few tips as I forge into the big scary world of independent reviewing (I have Goals, you know).

Instead, the panel more or less mirrored a lot of the discussions I’m seeing online about reviews. Questions included:

  • What can we do to get more reviews?
  • What can we do to get more positive reviews?
  • How do we deal with negative reviews? Should an author engage?
  • What is the purpose of reviews, period?
  • How do we game the system?

The consensus of the panel really left me somewhat discombobulated. I’ve reviewed books professionally for nearly a decade. And I very much believe that reviews are for the benefit of readers. Instead, it seems to be that reviews are perceived by many content creators as a way to promote their work (and some venues encourage this symbiosis). Have I been doing it wrong all this time? And no one told me?

Are reviews actually thinly disguised promotional tools? I suspect that some would say that they are–I know that it is definitely possible to purchase coverage in some publications, although they do not guarantee a positive review.

I mean, I do understand the author’s dilemma: you spend a lot of time and energy writing a book and getting it published and then some jackass on Amazon gives it one star because they don’t like the price or the font or something that is more or less beyond your control. And that crappy review then sits on your Amazon page and you can’t do anything about it. It must be such a temptation to ask some friendly souls to read your book and then say nice things in order to push that one star review down the page or to drive up the average ranking. Although honestly? If I’m looking to buy a book and the only reviews are someone complaining about something I know that the writer can’t control, I’m not taking those reviews very seriously. In other words, unless someone can definitely prove to me that the one star review of pettiness actually tangibly affects your placement in Amazon’s search results (i.e., I want numbers), then you can safely disregard it. Attempting to divine the mysteries of Amazon’s algorithm is, quite likely, time you can spend doing other things–like writing your next book.

So if reviews aren’t promotional tools intended to move large volumes of books from seller to consumer and thereby help to fuel the capitalist engine that is our economy, then what good are they? The answer is actually very simple.

Reviews are for readers. Reviews are not for authors, they are not for publishers. Reviews can be used as promotion, but ultimately, a review is written to let the reader know if a book is worth their money and, more importantly, their time.

I’ve seen recommendations that reviewers try to write reviews that can be used for promotion and just, no. That’s called blurbing and that is a different beast entirely. Conflate the two at your peril.

The instant a reviewer starts writing with the intent of being pull-quoted by the author or publisher is the moment when they are no longer a credible reviewer.

Let me phrase it a bit differently: The moment the audience for the review becomes the author or publisher, the reviewer’s opinion can no longer be trusted by the reader.

I am not anti-pull-quote. What I am is anti-writing-for-the-pull-quote. A review should be authentic and you shouldn’t be looking to content creators for validation.

Perhaps, you think, what greater validation can there be for a reviewer than seeing their words on the back of a book? How about:

  • What you wrote convinced a reader to give a book a try and it turned out that they loved it?
  • Or that your review let them know that their time and money would be better spent elsewhere?
  • Or that they completely disagree with your review and proceed to give you reasons which convince you to give the book another chance yourself?

These are all great things to have happen as a result of a review. They are, in many ways, much more satisfying than seeing four words from your review on the back of a book. At least to me they are.

At its best reviewing is a conversation between readers. At its worst, it is the regurgitation of press releases and a hard sell.

Authors have many different venues by which they can get criticism. And while authors are becoming more and more responsible for doing their own publicity and I do understand how frustrating that must be at times, they shouldn’t try to co-opt reviewers into being responsible for saying snappy things that will move copies off the shelves and servers and into people’s homes and e-readers.

I am also troubled by authors offering free copies of their books to readers in exchange for reviews. The implication there is that in return for the free book, you will say something nice about it in public or refrain from saying anything at all. The only time I think it’s okay for an author to offer copies directly to readers for review is if they are explicit about expectations and that expectation should always include the possibility that the reader did not like the book.

Review copies from publishers are a little bit easier to negotiate–there’s distance from the author and while the publisher is hoping for a positive write-up there is definitely less chance of blowback onto the reviewer, at least from the publisher and author’s direction.

Probably 70-80% of my reading material over much of the last decade has been in the form of review copies and I’ve written close to 600 reviews during that time. And there have absolutely been times when I’ve felt that I should “be nice”—because the book was advertised in the magazine, because I liked the author personally, because the author had a longstanding relationship with the magazine, because I didn’t want to deal with potential fall-out, because I was writing for an audience where niceness is the accepted form of public social discourse.

And then, after a while, I noticed other things: more and more often, I found myself selecting books that I knew I would probably like over those I knew I wouldn’t—so my average rankings were starting to creep upwards. I was challenging myself less. I felt like my writing was become flatter and more formulaic. I simply wasn’t enjoying the reading or the writing anymore. And that is when I knew it was time for something to change. And that change is this website.

I would like this post to be the start of a conversation–what do you think the role of reviewers should be? What kind of landscape do you think readers should encounter when they look for a book to read? I welcome responses from everyone involved in the peculiar transactions that are reading and writing–this is something that concerns everyone who loves books.

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