Book Reviews: why (I) bother (sometimes)

This post is adapted from a few previous ones I wrote on various social media sites, mashed together with some new stuff. I figure if Meta can munch my words to train its data robots, I can certainly re-use them myself now and again. Especially when I still agree with myself, which is never any sure thing.

I've been seeing more (from internet strangers--algo's gotten weird) handwringing posts of the "I read a book and didn't really like it--is it my duty to post a negative review?" And by "post a review" I believe they mean on socials or maybe buy sites--I presume if they were assigned reviews by an editor, they'd have a mandate or at least guidance about tone. So...for reviews assigned by no one, for books they do not like, they are wondering if they have a "duty" to tell the world how they feel??

I am not someone who feels that you can't critique in public--sometimes there's a reason to do so. There are trends that happen in literature that bear conversation to see why it's going that way and why and/or how, maybe, it could go another way later. There are authors who are almost uniformly loved who, when I have a dissonant opinion I might share it--not to be contrarian but just to add some zest to the dialogue and also to show that there's more than one way to feel. And there's a whole separate category of books that I'm angry about--books that are hateful, or just slyly neglectful of the heart of important matters. Let's talk about those, all day.

But calling out a bad book because...it's bad? Sure--if you want. I'll never say you can't--or even shouldn't. It's a free country. I very very respectfully hold harmless the authors of three absolute screeds about my early books. Those reviewers excoriated my books for being not to their liking. I didn't do it TO the reviewers personally, but the reviews had the tone as if I had. They were free to write them. As is anyone. You can absolutely always say what you think.

I'm just not sure about the "duty" piece--why would it be anyone's duty to write a vituperative review on Goodreads? The authors of the reviews of my books that hated them so much were on assignment and probably couldn't bail, though perhaps they didn't even want to finish reading, let alone write the things.

I do somewhat feel a duty to speak about books I DO like--even great books get so little glory these days, and I do try to make time to put a little something up on goodreads or somewhere. But I go easy on myself too--it's not an assignment, I read plenty for my actual jobs (so many jobs) and what I read for pleasure can't be transformed into duty or I will actually lose my mind. I know we are all supposed to be doing this for each other but I just do not have something to say about every book I read—even the good ones. A bunch of my Goodreads listings just say “read” and I’m just going to have to live with that.

To me, most reviews are a form of somewhat halting conversation—reviews are rarely where I get recommendations on what to read (that’s what friends are for) but rather where I got after I have read something to get a range of other opinions to answer my own. And then once I have processed my feelings enough, sometimes I write back in the form of my own review.

So I do write a fair share of capsule reviews on Goodreads, usually born of feeling fired up with opinions, good or ill, at the ending of a book, and then reading a bunch of reviews, professional and amateur, and realizing my opinion is at least a mild outlier so I’d better share it. Here’s a smattering:

Poor Things by Alistair Gray
This book is fully bananas and I loved it--very much a riff on Shelley's Frankenstein, both in terms of it being a tale about a scientist creating a patchwork person and the structure of the book being layered narrative commenting on and refuting each other. There's a political undertone and a sexual, neither of which I remember from Shelley, both of which are interesting but seem to ramble a little bit too long at times, throwing the pace off. Otherwise just an absolutely fascinating surprise of a novel--I did not expect the turns it took and laughed aloud many times.

**Read in audiobook, which, while the voice actors are excellent and convincing, I do not entirely recommend because of the intertextuality of the book would lend itself to flipping back and forth in a paper copy if you had one to hand. Still, I liked the audiobook a lot.

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel
Wow, I loved this book. Post-apoc is not my genre--and I really want a break from it after this--but I keep getting sucked back in because so many great artists are writing it right now. It does give me hope for literature that a book that everyone liked, that sold so many copies and got made into a show and is so generally buzzy is also so good. So complicated both in structure and in moral uncertainty. It's like a giant puzzle you are putting together, wondering how all the pieces spread out on the table fit together and then you find a missing one in you shoe, or under your tongue--everything does click together beautifully. At least it does for me--other reviewers found more dropped threads but I thought the main storylines worked out perfectly and anything that didn't hang together didn't need to. Eye of the beholder, I suppose. Stunning work, to this beholder.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
I have rarely hated a book so intently and finished it. The fact that I made it to the end says something but I don't know what. This absolutely miserable novel bears no resemblance to any human experience I have witnessed. I have read a bunch of reviews suggesting what it might be about--for a while my personal theory was "the tragic cowardice of provincialism," which did not thrill me you had better believe. However, I came to think that the novel was about nothing so much as the novelist lining up the characters to behave in utterly unrealistic ways--in any given situation they would make the absolute worst choice, which never seemed completely implausible in isolation but over the course of 600 pages was increasingly bananas--to get the most bonkers ending possible. The whole last quarter of the book was to get the choreography right for the wildest possible nonsense of an ending. I hated everything and everyone in the novel but also had no thought that this was a book about human beings but just pretentious goofery.

I also occasionally write long-form reviews on my blog, which approach essay-style. I’m not great at that sort of thing because it’s hard for me to construct thesis and argument if there is no professor poised to grade me, but occasionally I feel strongly enough to try. These are pretty emotional and rambling but I enjoy the process once I get going. I won’t paste the whole long things in but here’s links to a couple I wrote on books I read for book club—I sometimes rehearse for bookclub by writing a review because I am just a very intense person, ok? One on Prophet Song by Paul Lynch and one on The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

All this to say, is this newsletter going to become a book review newsletter? Probably not, but it will feature them occasionally, I suspect. I read a lot, I am very opinionated, and honestly sometimes there is nothing else going on in my life but books and cats, and we all need a break from hearing about my cats now and again. I mean, people tell me that—I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t heard it from multiple sources. Also book reviews are a nice point of dialogue—do you agree with my opinion on these books? Disagree? Think I should be reading something else entirely? I would love to know your thoughts!

Look, I made a tiny image signature line with my book/link in it! Every newsletter, something new and (hopefully) improved!!

<3

RR