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Whose Reviews Do You Tend To Read? (11/17/19)
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Marc
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Nov 17, 2019 12:18PM
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For gr reviewers, Hugh and Neil both give fair and unbiased views. Paul and GY give detailed ones. For booktubers Sophie from portal in the Pages is honest, and 9/10 I usually agree with Eric the lonesome reader- He’s at his best when he thinks outside the box. After reviewing Ducks .. he made a batch of cinnamon rolls!I think Ron Charles totally hip book reviews is brilliant- I’d want more reviewers to treat a book like he does.
Robert wrote: "I think Ron Charles totally hip book reviews is brilliant - I’d want more reviewers to treat a book like he does..."Ron Charles is also one of my favorite professional reviewers, as well as Michael Dirda. I often find The Guardian reviews have a different twist about them than those in US media, whether of new books or the classics. While the NYT and LAT and several magazines publish some good reviews (Paris Review, Economist, NYTRB, Atlantic, Book Page, ....), for some reason I've never gotten to know their work as well as I do that of the WP. Yet, certainly Michiko Kakutani, James Wood, and Colm Tóibín are among those who have commanded attention over the years.
Among Goodreads reviewers, I try to catch what Violet Wells has to say when she puts up a new, sometimes contentious, review. Otherwise, reviews that merit attention on my community page or are provided by some of the frequent, more articulate contributors to the 21st Century Board. Sometimes my favorite non-professional reviewers are anonymous as names to me, but seem to bring a specialized knowledge to their comments. Often those may like the book but are giving it a two or three star rating -- something has troubled that reviewer enough to give it voice.
That said, I'm now guessing I use reviews more to assess a book than to learn about availability (say, of new titles). Would have to watch myself for awhile to answer reliably.
I read book reviews in the NY Times and many of them over the years have caused me to buy a book. I agree that Ron Charles of the Washington Post writes entertaining reviews. On GR, the reviewers whose reviews have lead me, more than once, to purchase a book are Hugh, Paul Fulcher, and Judy Krueger. The audio reviewer reviewing on You Tube under the name The Bookchemist (on GR he is Mattia Ravasi) is a favorite. His reviews have also led to more than one book purchase. But perhaps the reviewer who has most damaged my pocketbook is Bill Lundgren. He used to write a monthly book review for the Longfellow's Books newsletter, which I have not seen in awhile. He also used to work occasionally at the store. Occasionally now I happen across a review by him in some local publication -- see, e.g., http://billanddavescocktailhour.com/l.... He can be very persuasive when he thinks a book is great. Our tastes do not always jive but he had led me to some really excellent reads.
Most media reviews I read are of non-fiction (and a pretty high proportion of what I look at on GR too). I often go looking for reviews by academics of big non-fiction releases, and so that's wherever I find them. The LRB, though I know it is much-maligned now, is my exemplar of the level of analysis and detail I want to see in book reviews. However I probably read more from some other places whose reviews I see linked online; I currently have several tabs open from the LA Review of Books, which is also good at high-quality longform stuff. I read the Guardian by default, but 90% of the time am disappointed in their book reviews because they are too short or insufficiently critical and analytical.
My favourite traditional media critic of fiction has generally been Nick Lezard but he doesn't get to publish much these days. He would often manage to pack more into the shorter British newspaper style review, whilst also being a stylish and witty writer, than most other UK critics.
I may be a recent convert to James Wood - whom I'd previously tended to find a bit dull - after being extremely impressed with his review of Celestial Bodies: I got a lot more out of a book I'd read months earlier by reading that, and it made me want to read his own book, How Fiction Works. (And also made me feel extra justified about going back to read classic authors I'd wanted to read when I was younger, but hadn't. The satisfaction of understanding the Faulkner reference, when I wouldn't have a few months earlier, was immense and as good as having read an entire prize longlist.)
There are plenty of individual reviews that are outstanding (like Patricia Lockwood's famous John Updike piece but I haven't noticed many younger critics so far who are regularly writing about books I want to read about, and in a way I like.
On Goodreads, Warwick, Anna, and a friend from way before GR, Alex, are probably my most-liked reviewers and the people who've had the most "Recommended by"s on my reviews of books I've actually read. Warwick is the person I'd most like to write like (which, as I've already said so to him years ago, shouldn't be embarrassing). But I rarely manage that levity in combination with seriousness which I admire. For new fiction, Blair and Roman Clodia are the people whose opinions I'm keenest to see.
(Two people in journalism, and two in academia on this list - even when I'm reading amateur reviews on GR, it seems I prefer them by people with a relevant professional background.)
There are a few newer people whose reviews I find I'm turning to for specific areas but I've only been reading most of them for a year or less.
There aren't a lot of bloggers that go into the sort of detail I like and I find proportionally better stuff on GR. I find a lot of blogs excessively focused on new releases with insufficient background in classics. (Too many comparisons with recent new releases that not many people outside the blogosophere read, and not enough with older works.) The ones I most enjoy reading tend to be a bit curmudgeonly, to read a lot of older fiction, sometimes with long reviews, and are not all that keen on new releases.
I very rarely watch booktube, though I've actually watched two or three of Eric's videos this year - longer ones about things like the Women's Prize preview and the BBC Novels that Shaped Our World list. He seems like a really nice person and doesn't do kneejerk hot takes, yet is also able to say when he doesn't like stuff.
But for individual reviews (unless of picture books) I don't think video is a good form, as, among other reasons, it takes a longer time to communicate a small amount of content compared with text.
I was going to respond to this when I saw the question but Robert had already summarized my thoughts. First let me qualify. I try to avoid reading reviews until I have either read the book or decided to skip it. I find that reviews beyond like/dislike tend to reveal too much information. So I like reading reviews afterwards as if they were a book discussion, and then, I enjoy reading everyone's reviews. I most like the glimpse of the individual revealed in the review but further enjoy how the points are argued or preferences phrased. But getting back to Robert's recommendations I would like to add Antonomasia's reviews as a favorite of mine. The reviews are academically informative, full of delightful opinion, well written, and a pleasure to read.
