I started writing book reviews this year – of every book I read. And I began publishing them on any site that accepted a review, with the author’s permission where necessary. An easy way to commit my impressions of a particular book to written memory in case I was asked a question about it sometime in the future, I thought, and a cheap way of making a name at someone else’s expense (the poor author of that book). Every marketing guru will tell you that you need to put your name and website address next to anything you write online. I’ve realized that my website hit count has gone up since. I no longer have to visit my site each day and hit it a dozen times before the metrics tracking bar rises marginally above the base line.
And then I realized the heavy obligation placed upon, but not often assumed, by the book reviewer. This was not about the reviewer – this was all about the book and its author. A bad review can sink a writer and a good one does not necessarily sell more books. And if reading is all about taste, don’t we all have different tastes? Isn’t one person’s poison, another’s honey? Isn’t the whole book industry all about tastes? Isn’t that why it got segmented into genres with their own unique sub-cultures, so that the literary fiction aficionado would not go ripping up the crime fiction book and saying, “the characters stink and move like cardboard cut-outs,” and the crime fiction buff would not toss out the lit-fic tome, screaming that it put him to sleep every time he opened it?
What right did I have to destroy these writers with my reviews of their work? So I narrowed my area of reviewing to the books I like to read: mainstream and literary fiction. And I tried to focus on the parts that left positive impressions on me, dropping hints of the not-so-nice elements, and hoping like hell that that writer (if he or she is still alive) would do something about it the next time. And when I read a poorly written book (in my opinion only) I send the author, or his agent, my comments separately as sincere developmental feedback; and in this instance, I do not post a review. Not that I am the world’s greatest writer, but as a frequent reader one picks up flat notes pretty damn quick.
Reviewing is a tough business, I have come to appreciate. Why do I do it? Because I have now learned, that more than the cheap fame factor, dissecting another’s work is a great way to hone one’s own craft and learn to write great sentences that resonate, and a way to avoid the black holes that some writers sink into. What we do with the dissected pieces and how we distribute them around is what calls for sensitivity, tact, and plain common sense. And the day I am not able to exercise such a balance is when I will give up writing book reviews.
Tags: authors, books reviews, review, website, writing
