Similarly, half the capsule reviews you get in most papers these days consist of nothing more than a plot summary. That's a blurb, it might as well be ripped off from the back cover of the book. It does nothing as a review.
Ah, okay; I actually seldom see capsule reviews here except as a mini-review that's essentially an excerpt of the longer review that ran earlier. But I have some sense of what a good review is, as a work in an of itself; I really admired your review of Ian McDonald's book -- I think it was River of Gods. I think in my tenure at F&SF I've written only 2 such reviews. One for Hannibal (which was somewhat accidental, but for which I read all of the Harris and also watched the movie, Silence of the Lambs, and one for Warchild by Karin Lowachee.
I will often read the weekend edition of the Globe, and all of the review section, frequently with no intent to read the actual books being reviewed, because there is something about a perceptive review that is entirely its own delight, and on occasion, there's something in the review itself that will make me go and pick up the book I had no interest in at all.
But I will say that in the store, if we could rate each book on 3 scales: Thoughtful & chewy, Requires Kleenex, and Fun, it's the books with hit the high end of Fun which would benefit most from reviews, and frequently all you can say about those is "I had a lot of fun with this" or even "This book was more fun than it had any right to be."
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-02-29 12:09 pm (UTC)Ah, okay; I actually seldom see capsule reviews here except as a mini-review that's essentially an excerpt of the longer review that ran earlier. But I have some sense of what a good review is, as a work in an of itself; I really admired your review of Ian McDonald's book -- I think it was River of Gods. I think in my tenure at F&SF I've written only 2 such reviews. One for Hannibal (which was somewhat accidental, but for which I read all of the Harris and also watched the movie, Silence of the Lambs, and one for Warchild by Karin Lowachee.
I will often read the weekend edition of the Globe, and all of the review section, frequently with no intent to read the actual books being reviewed, because there is something about a perceptive review that is entirely its own delight, and on occasion, there's something in the review itself that will make me go and pick up the book I had no interest in at all.
But I will say that in the store, if we could rate each book on 3 scales: Thoughtful & chewy, Requires Kleenex, and Fun, it's the books with hit the high end of Fun which would benefit most from reviews, and frequently all you can say about those is "I had a lot of fun with this" or even "This book was more fun than it had any right to be."