She Treads Softly: reviews are coming soon...

Sunday, December 27, 2015

reviews are coming soon...

Rest assured that I am here, still reading and writing reviews, but everything I'm reading are advanced reader's copies to be published in January. Normally that might not stop me from sharing a few reviews in December, however, at this point, everything I've read is very good and could hit the top books for 2016. If January is any indication, 2016 may be an outstanding year for books!
Watch for my best books of 2015 coming soon!

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.