The New York Times Notices I Exist

Okay, I'm in the NYTimes. Time to close up CR. It's a been a nice run, and thanks to everyone who dropped by.

Just kidding.

The article that mentions/links to this blog also mentions/links to Beatrice (and Beatrix), The Reading Experience, Bookdwarf, TEV, Golden Rule Jones, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, and Ed Champion, among others. It's placing us in the context of the internet's tendency to make lists and refer back to/review things.

It discusses the Book Review thumbnails that have cropped up lately (by the way, the Chron is coming later this week). Unfortunately, it doesn't do so in a way that convinces me the author has much idea or regard for what we are doing.

Ron Hogan, who writes a literary blog called Beatrice.com, recently began a second blog, Beatrix: A Book Review Review. He's not the only one reviewing reviewers. The blogs Bookdwarf, Conversational Reading, The Elegant Variation, Golden Rule Jones, The Reading Experience and Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind - all gloss, grade or review other people's book reviews.

Most book-review reviews are summary, to say the least. Their main purpose, it seems, is to get noticed and linked to by more popular blogs.

I would hope not. If my purpose here was to get noticed by more popular blogs, I'd lie my ass off about celebrities and post soft-porn photos. I imagine that would attract plenty of attention.

I won't speak for any of the other bloggers, but I'm reviewing the Chron book review because, by and large, I don't think it's doing a good enough job. In fact, if the book pages of America were providing me with what I need, literature-wise, I probably wouldn't have turned to blogs at all.

My critique of the Chron is an attempt to articulate what I think that review lacks and to ask that it do better. It is also my chance to say what I would like to see in a book review, and to help myself figure out what I should do as a reviewer (as most of you should know, I write book reviews for various publications).

I try not to simply summarize the reviews that I discuss, but to actively distinguish what I do and don't like and to articulate why. In addition to that, I know that many people who read CR do not read the Chron. So if I see something particularly well-written or find a book that a reviewer makes sound appealing, I want to pass that information on to people who visit this blog.

Lastly, if a review makes a particularly interesting point about a book, or says something that creates a strong response in me, I'll try to respond to it to further the discussion began in the Chron's book pages.

I sincerely hope that I've done more than summarze the Chron book review. That would be pointless, since it would be far simpler to just link to it (it's all online).
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I think a far more interesting way to look at all of this is that we are not trying to make lists of what we see, but rather trying to inject the traditional newspaper Sunday Book Review into the internet. As it is, your local Sunday Book Review is a dead-end. You read it, maybe you discuss it with your friends, and it dies there. We're talking about this stuff online, bringing a discussion of these pages to the web where, ideally, they would be less of a dead-end proposition. I cannot say how successful we've been in stimulating discussion of Sunday Book Reviews, but I think this is a more interesting framework for looking at what we are trying to accomplish than simply saying "the Internet makes lists."

Comments

[Frances]

I see the thumbnail reviews of the reviews as a way to push newspapers to do a better job. If there's no competition, it's easy to be lazy. And while those of us who blog and read other blogs know there is some great discussion about books and authors and publishing happening, it's still fairly invisible to the rest of the world. That's why the New York Times wrote that story. It's an announcement the paper finally understands there's this "new" discussion going on. Soon, many more people will figure that out as well.

[Ed]

I have to agree with you, Scott. Speaking for myself, beneath the humor of the Brownie Watch rests a genuine concern for the future of book coverage. Almost two million people get the NYT on Sunday, many of them in towns where they can't find book coverage in their local newspapers. If the Times is a subsitute, then it should damn well serve as a valid beacon. While I've applied a loose numbers approach to point out the NYTBR's limitations, I still take the time to flag certain reviews that take up pivotal column inches away from books that could have been covered. This is not mere counting. It's loose data that can be used to point to an unspoken truth. And I think that everyone applying whatever tests they see fit has pretty much has the same idea in mind.

Again, I should point out that I'll happily live up to my end of the bargain and send Sam Tanenhaus some brownies if he fulfills what I see as some pretty fundamental duties for a major book review section.

[bookdwarf]

I'm just chiming in to agree with you all. I always read the Globe's review section, but am never excited about it. I think they could do a much better job. There's lots of exciting books out there but the Globe is only doing a half ass job of covering any of them. Plus the whole section is so staid. Even with the new Ideas section, which is their attempt at doing something different. I applaud that and like it but then you turn a few pages and it instantly becomes so boring.
Anyway, it's nice to know someone is reading I suppose. Though we do a lot more than just cover the book review sections which she neglected to mention.

[Lauren Baratz-Logsted]

It's amazing how thin-skinned the Times can be, given that it's, well, the Times. I thought the tone of the article was snarky - no surprise there! - with maybe an added DeNiro touch to it: "Yo! You lookin' at me?"

[Lauren Baratz-Logsted]

I think it's amazing how thin-skinned the Times is, given that they're, well, the Times. I thought the overall tone of the article was snarky - no surprise there! - but with an added DeNiro twist, almost as if the Times were saying, "Yo! You been lookin' at me?"

[SisterRye]

I agree. I usually prefer what all of you are writing, to what the Times and the Chron are putting out there. And, these sites are not just lists of lists. The difference is, that these sites here are not commercially driven. They are done for the love of the books and the process of reading and discussing them. At least, it seems that way.