Thursday, April 05, 2007

Review Theory

Reviews are everywhere now and as the ultimate venue of reviews continues to abandon paper for screen, thoughts on reviews seem to change. People endlessly debate about it, and pretty much any average schmuck can set up a blog or the equivalent and spout out reviews (just like me). Here are some of the recent grumblings happening (from SFBC and elsewhere).

In response to things like this, a couple of months ago Gabe Chouinard set an entire message board devoted to reviews and their discussion. And Steve (a member) was quick to make fun of it.

I’m not a critic, just a reviewer. I’m not out to provide a long, in-depth analysis of anything. I write relatively short reviews providing a brief summary of the book and why I did or did not like the book. What you see is what you get, and I’d say that with the growth in viewers of this blog I’m providing something people find value in. I plan to keep doing things in this way because it works and it's what I'm looking for in a review (more depth is for after I've read teh book). If you’re curious, I go into a bit more depth on my reviews here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Urm.

The board wasn't set up as a forum for critics, but more for just general genre issues. It just sort of ended up as criticism-focused.

Just to clarify.

Neth said...

Thanks for the clarification.

I wasn't trying to pidgeon-hole the board, it's just it's the only board I know of with a section for discussing reviewing as it's done there.

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