hahaha! Very clever.

oh, this is going to save me so much time. And I expect it will make my reviews infinitely more readable. ;-)

i don't understand the numbers. i imagine i am the only person on GR who will have this problem, but i just don't understand them. hmmm. and yeah, very clever review, jakaem! i especially love the tweet.

(i adore oskar and christopher)

The numbers are my GR ratings of each of 'em. I took the liberty of assigning quarter stars in my infographic, where I can't in my reviews. I'm all about precision in PowerPoint. <-- oxymoron.

jo wrote: "(i adore oskar and christopher)"

I expect you will also adore Jack.

I wonder if a movie is in the works on this one. I can't imagine someone isn't gobbling this up and turning it into a script as we type.

Jennifer (aka EM) wrote: "The numbers are my GR ratings of each of 'em. I took the liberty of assigning quarter stars in my infographic, where I can't in my reviews. I'm all about precision in PowerPoint. <-- oxymoron."

oh they're *ratings*! but that doesn't tell us anything about their being grouped together, does it? please revise. thanks. bye.

*snicker* Well, I think the viewer needs to do a little bit of the work with an infographic. Hint: I have a schema in my head for the two axes, but I suspect others might choose to label them or think of them differently.

Try again.

k thx bai

I don't know the book by Shriver, but...could it be the more to the left, the more commercial, the more to the right, the more literary?

Hmmm. What a thought-provoking comment.

I'm not sure I'd classify 'commercial' and 'literary' as a dichotomy. But that's just me - and opens up that lovely hornet's nest of the literary value of books if they are also commercially popular.

Commercial suggests to me popularity based on sales. The confabulating variable there is time since publication. I predict that Room will achieve Curious Incident and Lovely Bones levels of success.

Has Oprah endorsed it yet? If not, she will. Oh, she will.

Such words are personal and have a relative meaning for each person. Some books may demonstrate greater ambiguity than others, certainly. But i would personally, for example, say that pulp romances are commercial, The Da Vinci Code is commercial, while Ulysses and Proust are literary. :-)

Jennifer (aka EM) wrote: "Hmmm. What a thought-provoking comment.

I'm not sure I'd classify 'commercial' and 'literary' as a dichotomy. But that's just me - and opens up that lovely hornet's nest of the literary value o..."

jakaem, david was astutely trying to individuate the two "axes" you refer to. i believe there are no such axes and you are simply messing with our minds. your turn.

jo wrote: "jakaem, david was astutely trying to individuate the two "axes" you refer to. i believe there are no such axes and you are simply messing with our minds. your turn."

Well, it's a square, right? So therefore, there are two axes. By geometrical definition, if nothing else.

And, David said left-right, so that's one axis - X, in fact.

Based on your comment above, David, it would be closer to accurate to call the Y axis literary merit (with the continuum Least to Most Literary), but in fact, Y is simply my own ratings. My ratings naturally evaluate literary merit in my own subjective way (don't all of our ratings do that? But also include some magic, too?). If we want to call Y Least to Most Literary, then I'd nudge Room down and nudge Curious Incident up.

Commercial, by definition, has to do with commerce, therefore sales. So I don't agree that that term is all that subjective, or that it's the opposite of "literary."

All that said, it's not what I was thinking of for X.

Find X.

hmm, also your ratings?

jo wrote: "hmm, also your ratings?"

Well, using the term 'rating' in its broadest sense, I suppose ... yes.

I will let you noodle on it a while, oh, I know you want to, as I need to go grocery shopping.

when you come back can you also tell us the title of this graph? or: why are these (vs other) books in the same box. ktxb

Well, not everyone would define Y as literary merit because sometimes people do love books that they know are trashy or very non-literary. Many people don't rate books based on literary merit, just on what they liked. I sometimes rate books highly that i just loved even though they might not compare in a literary sense to other books. For example, i give 1984 4-stars because it's so depressing and Ulysses 4-stars not 5 because it's not very fun. On the other hand, i give Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 5 stars because it makes me laugh out loud but i would never claim it's more literary than Ulysses.

As to "commercial," I'm thinking of that as meaning more "mainstream" meaning a style of book that was written to sell to a specific audience and crafted to follow various stereotypes of narrative. While literary would be something that feels to the reader (you are me) like it's a work of art.

jo wrote: "when you come back can you also tell us the title of this graph? or: why are these (vs other) books in the same box. ktxb"

Ahhhhh, an excellent penetrating question. You are SO CLOSE!!

These books occupy - imho - the same thematic and emotional space as each other. Some have more things in common than others.

I didn't give my infographic a title. Is that de rigeur for the form? I am new at this, but willing to learn.....

David - yes, I agree. My ratings tend to weight literary merit (in my own subjective opinion) heavily - mostly because I'm an insufferable snob - but lit merit, while significant, is only one element of them. That's the "magic" I was referring to.

I'd be comfortable with "mainstream" and "literary" as two poles of an axis. I think Foer is extremely literary (whether or not you consider him pretentious, or even high quality, is a side issue), but he also sells a bundle. He would be an example of literary/commercial and the prime reason I was resisting the latter term as one end of the pole.

I'm not sure how strongly I hold that opinion though, so feel free to challenge it.

i don't disagree. Foer manages to create literary artifacts that also have had a broad appeal, although i still wouldn't call it "mainstream" success. He's not a household name and he's definitely not targeting his work at a particular audience. I believe his most recent novel take someone else's novel and cuts it into pieces...a remix, essentially. Sounds pretty artsy to me. But various books could fall anywhere on that continuum and some might be toward the middle - depending on the readers degree of snobitude, shall we say?

Words may be "so 2010" but I'd hazard to say that most of us on here are "word people". This review was less than helpful.

somewhat similar, then, to your less-than-helpful comment, Katie. I guess we're even.

Brilliant! Love your infographic!

I abandoned the infographics - they weren't even working for me. :-p But thanks Elizabeth!!

Well, at least it gave me the opportunity to add the books about Oskar and Christopher to my TR list!

then, its mission was fulfilled! You will not be disappointed in either, I don't think.