InsideMobileApps InsideSocialGames 10,000 Words FishbowlNY FishbowlDC LostRemote TVNewser TVSpy AgencySpy PRNewser MediaJobsDaily UnBeige

Too Mean? Some Find Book Reviewers Overprotective

Yesterday, I asked you how critical book reviewers should get, and at least one person on the mediabistro.com discussion board thinks that things among the literati have gotten a little too cozy. “GraceVictoria” says that she once wrote a negative review of an established author whose latest book was, she felt, “third-rate and shallow,” then met a woman who had just given the same book a positive review in the NY Times. Confronted on the critical disconnect, the Times contributor agreed the book wasn’t that hot, but reportedly said, “[This writer] deserves support in her career, and if you read my review carefully, you’ll see that I really don’t critique the book itself very much.” And it was so! Then “Metro Writer” admits to exactly that sort of softball throwing on a review assignment: “I wrote a kind review on a book I didn’t particularly like,” this commenter reveals, “because I knew his wife was dying of cancer while he was writing it. If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t be doing my best writing, either.” (Fine, one might ask, but what are you doing here, a book review section or group therapy?)

There’s also a mini-debate over whether the reviewing community has been giving Bridge of Sighs a critical pass because everybody loves Richard Russo, to which Washington Post reviewer Ron Charles points out that he found plenty to complain about in the novel.

Mediabistro Course

Nonfiction Book Proposal

Nonfiction Book ProposalStarting September 4,work with a literary agent to complete a full proposal that wins an agent and a contract! Ryan Harbage from The Fischer-Harbage Agency, Inc. will teach you how to convey your idea in a winning book proposal format, write your proposal letter, understand the nuts and bolts of the nonfiction book industry, and more. Register now! 
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/too-mean-some-find-book-reviewers-overprotective_b5856
www.mediabistro.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-35
44983
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:NRC4CV4I5BD6EM2K4EYNOCM5C2FDXQ6Q
<urn:uuid:d2c53c10-bae6-4658-aeb0-512f81c6b907>
2014-08-27T09:57:15Z
38.126.102.81
sha1:7VJY3JWCQFVVOY3NEIAEGVRGICOH7KQJ
<urn:uuid:9bcf1fcd-b788-499a-a1c7-c7242edf6709>
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/too-mean-some-find-book-reviewers-overprotective_b5856
length
response
<urn:uuid:a8b279d9-aa82-4689-8893-b3edae2e349e>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-35
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for August 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf