Before I offer my (probably offensive) book review advice, I would like to make two important qualifications.
First, if you are writing for family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances – ignore this advice. It doesn’t apply to you.
Second and similarly, if your subject is yourself, and writing about a book is simply an opportunity to enrich your engaging self-portrait – ignore this advice. It doesn’t apply to you, either.
However, if your subject is the book and you are writing for the general public, then some of the points in this lunatic rant could possibly apply to you (although I sincerely hope they don’t).
Now, may all the saints in heaven forgive me. Here goes:
- Don’t tell us how much you love reading books. We assume you do or you wouldn’t read them.
- Don’t tell us how much you hate reading books. We’ll wonder why you read them.
- Don’t write a blog post about how you have nothing to say about the book. If you nothing to say — say nothing.
- Don’t write a post about how you didn’t understand the book. See above.
- Don’t write a post about how you found the book boring because you didn’t understand it. See above.
- Please don’t tell us how the book got you through a difficult time in your life. We’ll feel like miserable, pathetic bastards for hating this book.
- Don’t tell us you liked a book without telling us why. Your reasons are what make your opinions interesting.
- Don’t tell us you disliked a book without telling us why. Your reasons are what make your opinions interesting.
- Don’t apologize for your opinions. They are what make you you.
- Don’t let some preening pin-dick with a real or fictitious PhD tell you your opinions are wrong.
- Particularly, don’t let some preening pin-dick PhD tell you you missed the “irony” of the book or have been tricked by its “indeterminacy” or its “unreliable narrator”. Most of the time, the f**ker is bluffing. Put him to the test. Ask him to explain. If he can’t, you win. If he can, you learn something.
- Don’t let someone tell you what is or isn’t literature. Any person more interested in categories than individual works is a philistine.
- Don’t write from apathy. Intellect without passion is a long, slow, grey death.
- Don’t write from disdain or despair. Love is what fixes our souls in the mind of God.
- Don’t begin any thought, sentence, or paragraph with the words, “I’m not sure this is relevant.” If it’s not relevant, cut it.
- For Christ’ sake, don’t begin or end a review with the words, “I’m not sure this post is worth reading.” If the post isn’t worth reading — don’t post it.
- Don’t tell us why you bought the book, where you bought the book, what else you were doing or who you were with when you bought the book, how much you like the store where you bought the book or how much you like the person you were with when you bought it, what you were wearing while reading the book, or what else was going on in your life while you were reading it. Don’t tell us where you read the book. Don’t describe your favorite reading nook or reading chair. Don’t post pictures of your favorite reading nook or reading chair. Don’t tell us what you like to eat or drink while reading books. For Christ’ sake, don’t post pictures of what you were eating or drinking while reading the book. Don’t tell us the book made you want to have sex. Don’t tell us the book made you not want to have sex. We don’t want to know. Don’t tell us about your lack of progress writing your novel. Don’t tell us about your garden, your pets, your motorcycle, your band, your new yoga pose, your favorite restaurant, your favorite club, your favorite gym, your classes, your job, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your wedding plans, your children, your parents, your shoes, or your Glock Gen 4. Don’t tell us about the fabulous pancakes you cooked on Sunday morning before you began reading the book. We don’t know you. We don’t care.
Phew. I feel much better now. Thank you for your forbearance. For slightly less cranky advice, see my personal reflections on how to write haiku.
Peter Galen Massey 
Great list! These don’ts can apply to most writing in general. The last point I 75% agree with, but when I write a review I might add what’s going on around me that actually connects to the book as a segue into my discussion of it (meaning there’s a point). The rest of the stuff is superfluous.
Yes. Probably a better way to have said it … although the more qualifications you put around an opinion, the less powerful it becomes … is “What percentage of the post is about the book and what percentage is about you?” Then, over time, you’ll attract the readers that are interested in those proportions, assuming they are also interested in what you say. I fall pretty far out on the spectrum of I-don’t-know-you, I-don’t-care. I guess that’s obvious. Heck, even when I do know you, sometimes I don’t care. I have good friends who will post updates on Facebook like “Milk on my cereal this morning.” All I can do is raise my eyes to the ceiling and shake my head.
Every book reviewer out there should take note of this.
Including myself, now. I have a new checklist I’m going to have to check new posts against.
Speaking as one of those with a PhD, re: your point about sneering academics “correcting” reviewers / readings…amen. The lit scholars / doctorates that I know find the preening, insufferable @#$% “experts” among us to be just as intolerable as everyone else does. I read what I read because I love it, and nothing ticks me off more than hearing a so-called colleague tell me that I have “misread” or “misunderstood” the work of literature in question. And don’t get me started on the ones who base all of their analysis on the notion that work of literature “resists” various interpretations. I read it one way, you read it another, and so on…that’s what makes literature so compelling. Great list, I’m going to keep it bookmarked for reference!
Thank you, Josh. I’m relieved that (so far) the comments have been more restrained than the tone, if not the substance, of my post. Long may it last. I’d be interested to know if any of the folks you know who state that a particularly text “resists interpretation” also have to grade papers or exams on that text. Because if they do, then there is a fundamental problem. They can hardly be in the business of getting paid to say there are right answers and wrong answers, or more right-ish answers or more wrong-ish answers, about a book in which they think no answers of any kind can be found. And I, personally, would not want to have to fall back on judging whether a student had made a more or less persuasive argument for an unprovable thesis. If you hand out grades, then you can only say a book is “difficult” to interpret or you have to be comfortable with intellectual hypocrisy, which … to think about it … most of the world is.
Ah, you’ve hit on a great paradox that many of those folks face; when in conversation with “colleagues,” they deploy as much obfuscation as possible in an unwitting reenactment of the Sokol experiment, then proceed to teach introductory courses based on simple, formal issues (narrative voice, meter, rhyme, character development, etc) and yet end up failing students who do not make the leap from these elements to abstract theoretical interpretations. I once TAed for a professor who expressed keen disappointment that freshmen were not able to understand the intricacies of interpolation and hegemonic discourse in an ancient text, and directed us to fail each and every student who could not define those terms to his/her satisfaction. I’ll state for the record that I love lit theory — I would rather read Derrida than Jane Austen, I’ll tell you that much — but I also understand that such work addresses vastly different audiences / interests. When I teach intro courses, I like to build assignments that ask students to conduct an investigation, using close reading of materials to explain a character’s actions, to link themes in separate poems, etc. You make a good point re: intellectual hypocrisy in your comment — I’m sure I’m guilty of leading students down an abstract alley or two, but I’d like to think I usually manage to show them the way back out somewhere along the line!
This may sound very odd … although it is apropos of Sokol (forgot about that, great story) … but I tend to think of 20th century literary theories as quantum mechanics and older critical approaches as Newtonian physics. When you start digging into the essential meaning of an Austen novel, or a single word (take a big abstract one for example, “love”), everything gets very weird and undefined and undefinable and unknown and unknowable very fast. Any kind of stable meaning or “truth” seems to disappear. On the other hand, read Austen on the level of plot, character, and structure, and you find recognizable human personalities behaving in ways that make intellectual and emotional sense in a recognizable world. The trick, it seems to me, is to able to deal with both kinds of “physics”. If you can, you’re really cooking. If you can’t, then you “obfuscate” and more importantly, you do it aggressively so no one gets the chance to challenge you. When you have no defense, you have to go on the offensive.
Also, I hope I haven’t come across as too hard on academic hypocrites. I’m a marketing consultant during the day, which has its own well developed, well self-justified set of hypocrisies attached to it.
I think you’ve hit the nail right on the head here. I pick on Austen because, well, Austen drives me nuts…but I do find moments of wonderful irony here and there in her work, which are the moments that I find compelling enough that I return now and again to remind myself that the content just isn’t my thing. I really love the “physics” model you bring up here, and I completely agree — if you’re interested / willing / able to deal with both models, you’re going to be able to relate to the literature — and other readers – on a variety of levels, and make it compelling all the way around.
And no worries re: too hard on academic hypocrites — they (we?) can take it. No profession is without it, as my time in the business world reminds me!
I’d like to add one more to your list: Read and review the actual book instead of watching the movie and assuming this is a true depiction of the book. I’ve noticed this happens frequently, even with professionals who should know better. In one of my writing classes, the instructor used Peter Pan and Pinocchio as examples of sweet characters; I pointed out the original literary characters were anything but sweet, and she admitted she’d never actually read the books. Recently, another blogger I subscribe to wrote about passive characters, using Bella from “Twilight” as an example. I’ve recently been reading the series for insights into the YA market, and discovered the literary Bella isn’t passive at all, though she’s portrayed that way in the movie. If you want to review a book, then you need to really read it, because Hollywood is notorious for twisting literature to fit it’s own needs.
That’s a good one, and it wouldn’t have crossed my mind because I wouldn’t think to write about a book I hadn’t read — much less teach it. On the book-to-movie transition, I have to admit I like it better when there are changes, because I don’t see any point in faithfully adapting a book to the screen, just like I don’t see the point in, for example, covering a Rolling Stones song and trying to sound like the Rolling Stones. If the work is mere imitation, I’ll stick with the original. Now if the book-to-screen changes seem to be driven by money — hey, this movie version of The Scarlet Letter would be a whole lot better if Hester Prynne is a nymphomaniac and we go for NC-17 — then I’m with you. I hope I didn’t just give Adrian Lyne an idea.
Will also bookmark this for future reference, and consider this sound advice with which to check my future posts against, also! ^_^ I’m sure I’ve seen myself somewhere in your list hahaha!.. There is another kind, Peter. People who draw literary analysis from disparate elements, totally unsupportable, and yet aggress people when they’re called to task. They hide behind, “that’s my opinion, gadamit, and you may take it or leave it.” The scary thing is, they are in the teaching profession.
May I post on FB, btw?
I’m not sure I always check my posts against this myself. I know, at least, I don’t post pictures of what I eat while reading a book. I’m not surprised by the unsupported argumentative. When you have no defense, you go on the offense. Yes, I’d be happy if you post on FB. Thanks for stopping by!
Well put, though–if I can’t write from disdain–there shall be no reviews of Cloud Atlas on my blog.
I actually don’t know anything about Cloud Atlas other than the title … and I think, a movie is coming out? It feels like one of those things in the culture that everyone knows about, except me for some reason.