Unjustified Enthusiasm

What makes this bellyaching (about bad reviews) so unseemly is that the vast majority of book reviews are favorable, even though the vast majority of books deserve little praise. Authors know that even if one reviewer hates a book, the next 10 will roll over like pooches and insist it’s not only incandescent but luminous, too. Reviewers tend to err on the side of caution, fearing reprisals down the road. Also, because they generally receive but a pittance for their efforts, they tend to view these assignments as a chore and write reviews that read like term papers or reworded press releases churned out by auxiliary sales reps. This is particularly true in the mystery genre, where the last negative review was written in 1943.

Joe Queenan warns about the dangers of over-praising authors in the New York Times.

For the Love of the Book

Our relationship with books is often complicated. Here are three recent articles from US newspapers well worth a read. :

Books entered my house under cover of night, from the four winds, smuggled in by woodland creatures, and then they never left. Books collected on every surface; I believe that somehow they managed to breed.

Take a wander around Luc Sante's book collection (left) in this very enjoyable piece from The Wall Street Journal.

I’m not suggesting that gigantic books are useful only as an excuse for avoiding responsibility.

You might not be so convinced as Joe Queenan talks about his love for big fat tomes in The New York Times.

I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter. Reinforce its reading rooms. But don't think of it as a warehouse or a museum.

Robert Darnton looks at the future of the research library in the The New York Review of Books, and underlines the importance of the physical book even in this electronic age.