Why I am not a reviewer
Jul. 9th, 2011 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vcmwOne of the things people who want to up their professionalism level in librarianship can do is write reviews. I considered this for about a month and tried it once, and well, no, that's probably never going to be my thing.
1) It's an intense form of short-form writing, at least for many review journals. You've got, oh, sometimes as few as 50-150 words for some librarian purpose reviews, because they have to fit hundreds of those suckers in, or they're putting them on index cards in a rolodex type thing, or something. Editing down impressions to that length is hard.
2) I suck at it. I mean, even if you gave me thousands of words, a room full of monkeys with type writers, and infinite time, I'd be all "who's the audience for this review?"
On the other hand, I was a pretty decent book recommender. I had a lot of repeat customers for that, and I also had a pretty decent track record with sending new folks out of the library/bookstore with a book in hand.
One problem, I think, with reviews, is that they don't often enough make their audience explicit. Or there's an assumption that because a review is professional, the audience for that review is potentially everyone. So, writing up a book here on my blog makes sense, because the implicit audience for the review is "people who found following things I say in my personal space about books meaningful" but I flinch away from writing up books on Goodreads or Librarything (I have defunct accounts on both) because I don't have any feel for who the audience is there.
So, if the audience you're working with is "people who love vampire romances and want to think that vampires are just misunderstood loners who are going to be redeemed by love" then Sunshine by Robin McKinley is not a good book. Because, y'know, the vampires are not just misunderstood loners who are going to be redeemed by love, and really, members of that audience are going to be happier reading Christine Feehan. Or, if they're younger, J. R. Ward or someone like that. Maybe Lyndsay Sands. On the other hand, if the audience you're working with is "people who like dark, humorous fantasy, don't object intrinsically to vampires or minor moments of explicit sexuality, and enjoy quirky magical stuff in contemporary settings" then Sunshine is a fabulous book and they're going to love it - and be, y'know, maybe not as likely to then really want to read The Blue Sword next as they would be to read Holly Black's White Cat.
What a reader wants out of the story is just as important as how well crafted it is. For a lot of readers, it's more important than how well crafted it is. And for at least some readers, "well-crafted" (as it is usually used in reviews, not as an abstracted term) = "poorly written" because those beautiful sentences and perfect words make it harder, not easier, for them to imagine what's happening. I had a long discussion one time with someone who really liked what is known in the library world as "urban" fiction. [For those unfamiliar, this is a term absolutely distinct from urban fantasy. Urban fiction usually refers to contemporary stories set in major cities featuring most often African-American characters, with common situations & storylines involving drug deals, jail, awkward sexual situations, struggling to make ends meet, etc.] She said that one of the things she valued in the form was that the straightforward writing allowed her to really keep a good mental picture of what was happening and understand the context of each scene. Side stories, flashbacks, viewpoint changes etc. were really difficult for her to read and keep track of, and a book had to be hugely compelling emotionally for her before she would be willing to keep reading it if it used those devices.
From that reader's point of view, any complicated narrative device was poor craft. Good craft involved being able to tell a story in a straightforward, clear manner, with each sentence pointing to the next and no digressions.
I have a really good friend, B., and he and I have been trading books back and forth for about a decade and a half. About half of the books that I adore and lend him he hands me back unread saying "this was so poorly written, I couldn't get in to it, I washed out after 30 pages." These are not books that I, personally, would rate as poorly written or lacking craft - I don't lend him the things that I adore but think are weakly written, because I know that he and I have different emotional tastes as readers.
I guess I'm writing this all out because I had an impulse earlier today to say that reviewing books in terms of craft-accomplishments was more popular than reviewing books in terms of affective-accomplishments because craft is more open to objective analysis. But then I had to stop and look back on my time actually recommending books, and go, no, craft isn't open to a universally objective analysis - good craft is a matter of group norms.
1) It's an intense form of short-form writing, at least for many review journals. You've got, oh, sometimes as few as 50-150 words for some librarian purpose reviews, because they have to fit hundreds of those suckers in, or they're putting them on index cards in a rolodex type thing, or something. Editing down impressions to that length is hard.
2) I suck at it. I mean, even if you gave me thousands of words, a room full of monkeys with type writers, and infinite time, I'd be all "who's the audience for this review?"
On the other hand, I was a pretty decent book recommender. I had a lot of repeat customers for that, and I also had a pretty decent track record with sending new folks out of the library/bookstore with a book in hand.
One problem, I think, with reviews, is that they don't often enough make their audience explicit. Or there's an assumption that because a review is professional, the audience for that review is potentially everyone. So, writing up a book here on my blog makes sense, because the implicit audience for the review is "people who found following things I say in my personal space about books meaningful" but I flinch away from writing up books on Goodreads or Librarything (I have defunct accounts on both) because I don't have any feel for who the audience is there.
So, if the audience you're working with is "people who love vampire romances and want to think that vampires are just misunderstood loners who are going to be redeemed by love" then Sunshine by Robin McKinley is not a good book. Because, y'know, the vampires are not just misunderstood loners who are going to be redeemed by love, and really, members of that audience are going to be happier reading Christine Feehan. Or, if they're younger, J. R. Ward or someone like that. Maybe Lyndsay Sands. On the other hand, if the audience you're working with is "people who like dark, humorous fantasy, don't object intrinsically to vampires or minor moments of explicit sexuality, and enjoy quirky magical stuff in contemporary settings" then Sunshine is a fabulous book and they're going to love it - and be, y'know, maybe not as likely to then really want to read The Blue Sword next as they would be to read Holly Black's White Cat.
What a reader wants out of the story is just as important as how well crafted it is. For a lot of readers, it's more important than how well crafted it is. And for at least some readers, "well-crafted" (as it is usually used in reviews, not as an abstracted term) = "poorly written" because those beautiful sentences and perfect words make it harder, not easier, for them to imagine what's happening. I had a long discussion one time with someone who really liked what is known in the library world as "urban" fiction. [For those unfamiliar, this is a term absolutely distinct from urban fantasy. Urban fiction usually refers to contemporary stories set in major cities featuring most often African-American characters, with common situations & storylines involving drug deals, jail, awkward sexual situations, struggling to make ends meet, etc.] She said that one of the things she valued in the form was that the straightforward writing allowed her to really keep a good mental picture of what was happening and understand the context of each scene. Side stories, flashbacks, viewpoint changes etc. were really difficult for her to read and keep track of, and a book had to be hugely compelling emotionally for her before she would be willing to keep reading it if it used those devices.
From that reader's point of view, any complicated narrative device was poor craft. Good craft involved being able to tell a story in a straightforward, clear manner, with each sentence pointing to the next and no digressions.
I have a really good friend, B., and he and I have been trading books back and forth for about a decade and a half. About half of the books that I adore and lend him he hands me back unread saying "this was so poorly written, I couldn't get in to it, I washed out after 30 pages." These are not books that I, personally, would rate as poorly written or lacking craft - I don't lend him the things that I adore but think are weakly written, because I know that he and I have different emotional tastes as readers.
I guess I'm writing this all out because I had an impulse earlier today to say that reviewing books in terms of craft-accomplishments was more popular than reviewing books in terms of affective-accomplishments because craft is more open to objective analysis. But then I had to stop and look back on my time actually recommending books, and go, no, craft isn't open to a universally objective analysis - good craft is a matter of group norms.
