A few years ago I took a short course about writing book reviews at the 92nd St. Y in New York. The instructor, Ben Downing, was a tough but encouraging teacher who impressed upon us the fact that writing reviews isn't easy. The main challenges are: summarizing a book succinctly (without giving too much away); establishing a context for the book, which in some cases requires extensive additional reading; and offering a critique that is both useful and justified. In a nutshell: being a great creative writer is no guarantee that you'll be a good critic. And the pay is pitiful.
After the class was over I made some half-hearted efforts to submit reviews to publications like the New York Observer. My lack of enthusiasm had two causes. It's especially difficult to break into review circles in New York (1), and I have a blog if I want to post a review (2). Of course I have a minute fraction of the readers of prestigious book reviews, but at least it's an easy way to share my thoughts.
That seemed like the end of it, but when we moved to Berkeley the reviewing bug struck again. For one thing, I became a reviewer for the Journal of Academic Librarianship. That's fun, and hopefully my reviews are worthwhile to professional librarians. But it's still not the same as being published in a general-interest book review.
That's finally happened. This week Rain Taxi published my review of Gail Pool's Faint Praise: The Plight of Book Reviewing in America (2007). This is a deeply meta-review...it's a review of a book about book reviews, which I discovered from reading another review (in the New Republic). Hopefully my next review won't have such a complex back-story!
Marcus,
Congrats on the publication--Rain Taxi is a great journal!
John
Posted by: Wevbo | January 28, 2008 at 06:05 PM