Seems this article in the Huffington Post about how blogs cannot possibly replace book reviews in newspapers made KatieBabs’ head spin around on her neck. (With anger, not because she’s possessed by the spirit of Col. Bimbo or anything). Bloggers cannot possibly replace book reviewers in newspapers, cries the author. Oh, they are so solipsistic and self-absorbed, and they use “I” too much.
So would it be snide of me to point out that if newspapers paid attention to the more profitable market share of fiction – that would be romance, folks – and reviewed books such as Kresley Cole’s, Nora Roberts’, or Nalini Singh’s recent novels, they might not necessarily be facing such dire financial straits? What, my economics has flaws? Please. My math skills bring all the boys to the yard, but mostly because they
doesn’t
don’t make any sense on this planet and thus are entertaining.
Yes, that’s a simplistic analysis and certainly one review of a romance novel would not turn the mothership of the economy around for any given newspaper, but while I try not to pay too much attention to analysis of blogs as writing formats, the bemoaning of the bloggers as the heiresses apparent to the now-dying review pages of newspapers bugs the crapola out of me:
I think book reviews on blogs—particularly those of the Blogspot variety—tend to be self-indulgent. Book reviewing bloggers need to move away from opinion in favor of judgment. How does the book compare to—and fit in with—the author’s previous work? What’s the book’s place in the genre? The canon? Does the writer succeed in doing what he or she set out to do—meaning, is it the book they meant it to be? Whether it’s the book the blogger wanted it to be is of much less importance to me, frankly.
We review romance because no one else in print did so consistently. I hold the books I read to any number of measuring standards as I write a review. Self-indulgent reflections on romance? Try: neglected as a genre too long. Put that in your newspaper and smoke it.
I can’t be bothered with reviews in papers or TV anymore. Do they really thing that WE care about what they like or don’t like? And are we really to believe that their opinions aren’t influenced by their likes/dislikes?
I don’t think anyone is that unbiased.
I would much rather read a bloggers opinion of a romance novel than some idiot who probably held their nose while reading it so it didn’t infect them with something. Like romance or a sense of humor.
I especially love the fact that the writer implied that newspaper reviewers have this certain ESP skill and can know what an author intended their book to be. And we all know that readers everywhere go into the bookstore wanting to only pick up books that fall into a certain place in the canon, because really, shame on them if they just wanted to read for oh, say, fun.
Um, just how the hell would they know?
Fanfic, blog book reviews… same issues for the most part, IMO. They are both “unprofessional.” Of course, unprofessional is not the same as bad, sloppy, or immature. It can be, but not always. Just like “professional” writing. I think we all know that just because something was published in a newpaper, magazine, or book, doesn’t automatically mean it is relevant, meaningful, or even well done.
This reminds me a review of a Julia Quinn book I read a couple years ago. I forget whether it was the Times or someone else, but review contained the phrase “It’s so nice to review a book people actually read” and was clearly written by a reviewer who was happy to talking about something different from her normal assignments, something that was just fun.
Dude! Although I’ve never heard them described like that we obviously have the same math skills. Thanks for the laugh.
There are good & bad ways to do reviews, but the divide is not between professionals & bloggers. The fact that you don’t use “I” doesn’t mean that you’re not just stating your opinion. I would far rather read a review by a person who tells me up front what his/her prejudices are than one who tries to pretend to be simply stating objective fact. There are too many reviewers who seem to simply be trying to prove how smart they are and what superior taste they have and that crap gets old fast, which is way I basically stopped reading them.
coming out of m a j o r lurkdom
Aren’t ALL (book) reviews, to some extent, self-indulgent?
spamblocker : problem74
“nuff said there! lol 😉
back to lurkdom 🙂
I’d rather read an opinionated review than one that pretends to keep clean of any bias (“pretends” being the operative word there). Let’s face it, regardless of format, a book review is pretty much someone’s opinion, even if the word “I” is completely avoided. The big difference? The person whose review is opinionated has obviously read the book, and not just the back cover.
Uh, isn’t a review a person’s opinion of a book they read?? Judgment, opinion…call it what you like, it’s still the same.
And how the frick would anyone know if someone wrote what they wanted to? Do they call the author and ask, ‘so, hows this book workin for ya’?
Srsly, I couldn’t care less about any of that. Did you read the book and did you like it? Why or why not? I don’t read just one review, nor does any one review influence my book buying. If a bunch of different people have the same gripe, I’ll think twice about a purchase. I’ve really enjoyed books that several people have hated, so it’s all taken with a grain of salt.
The type of review described in that article – where the book fits in ‘canon’ etc. sounds way more self-indulgent and, frankly, prone to pomposity and uselessness than an honest and frank blog review where the point is, “Is this book well-written and enjoyable? What are its outstanding good (or bad) points?”
And isn’t ‘canon’ just a euphemism for “Does this fit into the ranks of respected but not enjoyed dead white guys?”
Sorry, that word obviously ticked me off.
Didn’t you know? All “legitimate” reviewers are issued crystal balls when they sign their contracts. THAT’S how they know what the writer set out to do and if they succeeded or not.
analysis82.
I agree with some of what she says about what makes a good review. But she’s both ignorant and complacent if she seriously thinks those attributes can’t be found online. For one thing, can she really be unaware that a number of reviewers for reputable print media *also* do online book reviews, and refugees from folding print reviews are increasingly to be found online?
Wrong. As many blog reviews are too long as too short. Print reviews don’t have space for a lenghty description of the plot; a long print review often adds more about the author, the genre, or the writing, rather than more plot. All reasons that I continue to read print reviews: I like context, and if I want to read the whole plot I’d rather read the book itself.
To be fair, I appreciate it when reviews give a book and author that kind of consideration. However, finding those qualities isn’t about the medium itself. Newspaper reviewers aren’t inherently different, but the *good* ones have an editor who carefully matches up reviewer and book so the reviewer really should have some idea what that author’s all about. A dilettante reviewer—like me—may pick up a book for sheer novelty value and then review it without a clue what the genre’s about. E.g. I’ve discussed a few horror stories, but I’m not the ideal reviewer for them because it’s not a genre I read regularly.
The best print reviewers know very well that there’s value in gut reaction as well as critique. I think book blogs are a space that allows all different styles of review *and* a wider variety of genres than conventional print. It’s not that online reviews need to ape print reviews; I’m interested in seeing more really good reviews in print *and* online.
Discussing those issues is *not* the same as saying you can only read “canon”. Again it’s the kind of context I appreciate in a review, and the best of the print reviews often have a good context for the book in question.
Turn it around: Say that someone completely unversed in romance picked up Book 10 of Christine Feehan’s Carpathian series and wrote a review. It might well read like “OMG, this is an Anne Rice rip-off AND the moron’s given it a happy ending! I can’t believe some publisher doesn’t get that Rice has already written all there is to say about vampires, and falling in love with a vampire is just Not Done!”
That review would have the depth of a small puddle of puppy urine, because as *we* all know, there’s a vast amount of vampire fiction out there; Rice is by no means the Entire Canon; and vampire romance has its own rules. A review that considers genre and canon can comment on where the Feehan books fit in all that vampire lit, and where they fit in romance, and whether they’re typical or innovative within those contexts, and whether the series still has any blood left in it by Book 10. The review doesn’t *have* to do all that, but if the reviewer is totally unaware of the context, odds are the review won’t “get it”.
Newspaper reviews are exercises in provincial circle jerks at worst and masturbation at best. If the effete of NY and LA ever stuck their heads out their windows, they’d know they weren’t the mostest smartestest pipples ever.
Oh, wait. That’s why they don’t. Never mind.
Obviously I’m not going to agree. If it’s not OK to say all blog reviews are bad, then ditto newspaper reviews.
Perhaps I should have put a “/sarcasm” on my post. I can see where it might seem I was entirely serious.
Oh, sorry. I’m really tired of the blog-versus-print war, and my sense of humor is diminishing accordingly.
Entirely my fault. My sense of humor tends to be parched. 😉
I enjoy all sorts of reviews except for the seriously fusty ones that give me nightmares of my time in grad school. But it’s worth noting that many of the questions the author of the original article suggested need to be answered in a “real” review are, in fact, matters of opinion. (The evil “I think”, couched in neutered and neutral terms to sound like fact.) You can discuss whether Feehan’s books are typical or innovative compared to canon…in your opinion. Yet other readers might have a different opinion and also be able to “prove” it using examples from canon and whatever lit crit tools and large, bombastic words they cared to implement. I guess you can turn your “review” into straight up lit crit but that serves a different purpose.
I mean, dude! Did it suck or what? Should I spend my money on it or save it?
All you people behaving like grown ups are going to give the internet a shoddy reputation.
RfP – well said. The one thing I’ll add is this:
Either way – too long or too short – it’s not the best writing, right? I’m “tempted to say” it’s an issue of editorial control. A print review is going to be subject to what the needs of the medium are – how many column inches can be accomodated, the style used by the paper/magazine, etc., while a blog may or may not have an editor who oversees things. Personally, I think some kind of editor is likely to be a good thing. I don’t mind seeing a reviewer constrained from expressing his response to something in terms of “wtf” or—-tard, or whatever the current interweb slang is at the moment. Granted, you’re more likely to see that kind of inarticulate verbal vomit in a movie review than a book review, but even in the most dumbed-down newspaper, you’re going to see better writing than that. There are lots of blog reviews I read for enjoyment, but I don’t think the scorn for blog reviews has come from nothing or is totally unearned (present reviewers excepted, naturally).
Col. Linda “Bimbo” Blair reporting for duty! 😛
The internut, it has the powers to lowers expectations.
Book reviews that are an attempt at academic literary criticism should in no way be the only content of a books section aimed at the general public. The quote that Sarah pulled out put me in mind of the hardest class of reference question I get as a librarian: literary criticism. I’m sorry, but as a general populace, “low brow” reader, I am not going to read any review that is attempting to conflate itself with something that appears in the Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC) series and its ilk. When I have my librarian hat on, yes, I’d like to have reviews for books from people who are reviewing a title with an eye to the type of collection the book would best fit in to when acquired (large public library, small public library, library with fans of the author, library with strong romance collection, etc.), but I can get those reviews from my professional journals or from other librarians/library workers who blog about books with the *acknowledged intended audience* being librarians with collection development duties. As a reader, I enjoy reading reviews from fellow readers. They know what will and won’t appeal to me as a reader. I don’t need to read a treatise of the book when a review will do.
Well, I did have a well-considered response to Warren’s article (I swear), but it got eaten by the spamblocker. So, in short: Warren segues from talking about lit-fic review sites to blogspot sites, the vast majority of which review popular or commercial fiction rather than lit-fic, without making any distinctions between them. The audience is different, the “canon” is different, the intention of the reviewers is different, and the requirements of the review are thus very different. And she never comes close to the question posed by the title to her article: Will Blogs Save Books?
Now that would have made for an interesting article.
Cecilia, yes, I think having an editor can be a boon. Not always—editors can limit and skew as well as improving—but when the system works, it can produce some really good stuff.
OTOH blogs show that edited print isn’t the only game in town. I’d hate to see *all* professional/print reviews go away, but blogs do better than some papers’ review sections.
Absolutely, and when a reviewer makes that effort it helps me figure out whether I’m likely to agree. I don’t care whether it’s couched as “WTF” or bombast; either way, that discussion helps me understand where the reviewer’s coming from.
I want to know “Did it suck or what?” too, and either “sucks!” or “not canon!” can be an interesting review. But my favorite style does some of each, because what sucks clots for someone else may be a bloody good read for me.
Avast yea scoundrel! I say we make him walk da plank!
Arggggh Arggggh!
Because I’m a self-avowed word nerd and often get wrapped around the axle on semantics, I keep dictionary.com open at a tab on my server. After reading through this, my first thought is that she’s equating a “book review” with a “book report”. Remember those from school? My sense of the connotation of “review” involved “opinion”. Curious, I checked and came up with this:
I’m not sure this makes any more sense but I’m tossing it out there.
Yeah, me too.
All right, when you put it that way, I’m not so annoyed, but I do think it’s a snooty word that “professional reviewers” would hesitate to apply to “genre crap” like Vampire Romance. Likewise, I don’t think it’s a word most genre writers would apply to their own work. I’ve seen the term “sub-genre” all over the place, but never “canon”, so it’s easy to see why some would think it only applies to dead white dude fiction.
Um, I intended it to be a book, hopefully a good one that people will enjoy reading.
Well said. I want to read books I’ll enjoy, and I want the reviews I read to help me decide if a certain book will suit that purpose. While we’re talking about author intent, well, I’m pretty sure that a large segment of litfic is not written to be enjoyed. That doesn’t make it not worth reading, but it does necesitate a totally different type of review if that review is going to be at all useful.
Sarah, I’m diggin’ your attitude today. 100% full of McRanty goodness. Granted, you’d probably be able to cool it if people weren’t dicks…
Is there anything more red-flag-worthy of dilettante behavior than the phrase “self indulgent?”
And, um… Blogspot is a variety?
K.
As a book publisher I am grateful to the many, many bloggers who are writing about books and making it easier for us book publisher types to reach the people who want to read our books. I work at a non profit press and bloggers have enabled us to find audiences who want our books that we couldn’t before afford to reach.
As a reader, I’m grateful to the bloggers who have helped connect me to a community of fellow readers and the books I want to read.
I wish more publications would review romances in the way that Eloisa James’ is over at the B&N;Review. She’s offering some cultural context and thoughtful (if brief) analysis of the books. That level of sophistication with regards to romances are only found in a few places, as far as I’m aware (including here at the Bitchery).
Thank you, SB. Exactly. It seems to me the print reviewers need to pull their heads out of their arses and get some advertising dollars, from, oh, perhaps the people that read most of the books (rather than the one who feel most clever doing it).
I actually think this is not as snotty as it can sound, like RfP said above. If a book is supposed to be a hilarious comedy and it’s clearly stale, unfunny recycled awfulness that most people would agree really sucks, then people can definitely tell whether or not the writer succeded in doing in what he or she set out to do. Likewise a romance—how many romance novels have failed as romance novels, with unconvincing romances or characters who clearly were just dumped together for no good reason? We know what the author set out to do, and we know when she failed at that.
Likewise the canon thing—that’s helpful too, and most people do that automatically anyway, I bet: “This book is just a JR Ward knockoff!” or “I can’t take one more dumbed-down Romantic Suspence novel!” or whatever.
I still don’t agree with the article, though. Blog reviews are awesome, and do a great job reviewing books. Often better than the NY Times do.
Leaving aside the issue of print vs. online, I actually prefer the “self-indulgent” type of review that’s written in first person and doesn’t try to hide the fact that it’s a personal opinion. From that sort of candid review, in which the reviewer’s biases are on display, I get a much better idea of whether I will enjoy the book than I do from the “professional” style review that pretends to be unbiased. I think it’s impossible to be unbiased when reviewing books.
I live in a major metropolitan area. We are served by one mainstream newspaper that seems to shrink daily. We are lucky to have a Books page at all on Sunday, and I can’t remember the last time I read a review on a romance. Usually, the two books they review are non-fic or “literary” works, and the occasional genre work tends to be mystery. So if I’m not reading a blogged review or comments on Amazon, I’ve got nothing. They can bitch all they want about blog reviews, but it’s not like anyone is giving us a “superior” alternative, now, are they? And I absolutely hate it when a reviewer, in either books or movies, takes on a genre or style that they obviously have no knowledge or use for. So personally, I’d rather read my reviews from people who appreciate the art form for what it is, not hold it in contempt for what it isn’t.
That may be true, but I don’t see a reason not to discuss romance in the same terms as other genres (sci fi can talk about canon these days). These fundamental differences in how criticism happens are part of why I’d like to see newspaper reviews incorporate romance on the same footing as other genres, as well as see a variety of types of online writing about romance. It ain’t happening, but that’s what I’d like.
That makes sense for a world where mainly dead white dude fiction is taught and reviewed. However, romance courses are happening here and there, and “canon” comes up fairly regularly on Teach Me Tonight:
– Musings on Reviews and Establishing a Canon of Romance
– Famous Literary Predecessors of the Modern Romance Novel
– and more
Ultimately, any review of ANYTHING is someone’s opinion, regardless of length or format. If it’s intelligent, well thought-out and useful to me as a reader/viewer, I could care less whether it appears in a newspaper or on my computer screen. (For instance, the reviews on this site have got me back into reading romances after something like 25 years, and I’ve discovered several excellent examples as a result.)
What I DO have a problem with (and this is primarily in the world of film, not books) is that anyone with a computer and a bit of bandwidth can now call him/herself a critic, regardless of their ability to write or their knowledge of the subject. More often than not, I find that these “critics’” cannot come up with anything more substantive than “It’s awesome” or “It sucks.” And they’re supposed to be arbiters of taste for the rest of us? I think of them as the “Awesome/Sucks Squad” —ASS for short.
stand49—OK, I’ll stand down from my soapbox now.
When it comes to fiction, I’m more interested in whether a book is entertaining than whether it’s “important to the genre,” or whether it fits in well with the author’s body of work.
Most of my favorite novels would probably get canned by most professional critics, while some critically-acclaimed novels (which I’m sure were groundbreaking in their genres) that I’ve read have been incredibly boring to me. If the reviewer’s priorities don’t match mine, then the review is worthless to me.
That’s why I like blog reviews. Maybe they’re subjective and “self-indulgent,” but if I know more about what the reviewer likes and looks for in a novel, I can decide whether their taste is likely to match mine.
Additionally, I seem to notice that most professional newspaper critics look down on any book or movie that’s not completely serious and depressing. It’s as though they think it can’t be art if it has a happy ending.
I’ve been talking about books and tv and movies in my own blog since 2002, and I admit sometimes it does boil down to “it sucks” or it’s awesome” (once in a while it can be both,) but I have never considered myself an arbiter of taste for anyone else. I didn’t set up shop gunning for newspaper critics across the land or anything, for crying out loud. I just wanted to share the love or the pain with other people. If someone else’s tastes mesh well with mine, and if as a result that person starts to pay more attention to what I had to say about books than newspaper critics, that doesn’t seem like a crime to me. That seems like common sense.