This weekend's NYTBR

[alanajoli]

I will be the first to admit that I am not a print newspaper reader. I actually detest the format. The pages are unmanageable and unweildy. The print makes your fingers black just from touching it. They even smell bad. So when the announcement comes in from both Publishers Weekly in this week's talk-back section on PW.com and the NYTBR (which I read online) that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is dropping their book review section, it matters very little to me. I get my book reviews, as a reader, from industry magazines (which I read online), the NYTBR (which I read online), industry news sites, and blogs. I get monthly e-mails from the publishers that offer such things that tell me about their new books. I check amazon and BN.com for pub dates. (Okay, so sometimes I actually call my local bricks and mortar B&N. I'm not so online-exclusive that I won't use the phone.)

But I realize that just because I'm completely unaffected by the increasing trend over shorter review sections (or no reviews at all) in print newspapers, that doesn't mean it's a non-issue. So I highly recommend reading this week's NYTBR (which also features a delightful article on why bad books are valuable and a review of a book putting forth the remarkable idea that communication, perhaps even language, stemmed from alcohol), and perhaps popping over to PW's Talk-back before they change the topic.

I'd also love to hear what the writerly and editorly type folk who occasionally comment here think about a) newpaper reviews, b) online reviews, and c) reviews in general. We've been told for ages that they're a useful marketing tool, but all of us who have watched Spidey 3 know that a bad review can just about end a career as well. What is a review's value in an electronic age, and how do you gage the value of one type vs. another's?

Comments

[eriksdb.livejournal.com]

Well, quality too, but not whether it's a "I loved this book" or "I hated this book." A review that says how the book wasn't very good, but lists all the things it could have done better, is still helpful. Maybe you're reading along, and a reviewer says something like: "the author attempts to shape fundamentally non-human creatures (drow, for instance) into something almost human." Now, whether or not the critic likes that, if you're reading along and YOU like that, you'll go pick up the book.

See what I mean?

Reviews that are SPECIFIC are usually better than reviews that are GENERAL, which are always better than three-word, "I loved it/I hated it" reviews.

Cheers

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

That's definitely true, as well. Any press is press, but good press is still better--and detailed press better yet. I've read some Kirkus Reviews where everything they say about the book makes it sound like something I love, even though the critic hates it.

Actually, that's something I should keep in mind while I'm doing reviews. I do try to spread out a lot of "what the books is about" type stuff with the "what was successful/not successful" for the book. But now that I'm actually thinking about specific, I wonder how much more I can do...