The Publishing Contrarian

I’m happy that newspapers are cutting back on book reviews. Most of them are unnecessary and just take up space. Long ago, I stopped believing the majority of them. 

No, I don’t mean every reviewer ought to be cashiered. I know a handful of book reviewers who are objective, insightful and truthful, and who can get you to run, breathlessly, to the book store and leap eagerly into bed with a book on Saturday night. (“Hands off! Can’t you see I’m reading?”) For the most part, however, I find reviewers just steal copy from the book jacket and promotional materials, glance at the first few pages of the book (maybe), turn in their column, collect a few measly shekels and move on to the next book, whoops, few bucks. 

If I am tempted to buy a book based on a reviewer whom I don’t know, 99% of the time I get a second and third opinion before actually making the purchase.       

Reviewers Who Delight in Maiming or Killing

When I was working at the book publishing arm of Barnes & Noble, Inc., I plucked an advance reader’s copy (ARC) from among the stacks of free ARCs tossed on a long table for us to take if we wanted them. The book was The Know It All—One Man’s Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, by A. J. Jacobs. It’s the true story of a middle-aged man who feels he has become a dolt and forgotten everything he ever learned. So he takes it upon himself to read the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z.   Of course, as he pushes through one volume after another, his brain overflows with esoterica, which he dispenses ad nauseum at every opportunity in EVERY conversation. You can only imagine with what his wife, friends and colleagues have to contend. As Jacobs becomes the repository of the history of the world, no, the universe, he and his wife are struggling with a serious family issue that, because you grow to like him and his wife so much, makes this book much more than just a yuck a minute. (My review, thank you.)

A more honest woman would have given back the money she billed for that workday. I drove my fellow cubicle dwellers crazy with my insane laughter. I actually sent the editor an email telling him how much I enjoyed this book, and got a nice email in return.

Then a review came out in The New York Times Book Review. What a cruel, unfunny, outright nasty review. The kicker, of course, was that The New York Times, in its infinite wisdom, had selected Joe Queenan, a “contemporary humorist and critic,” with an ostensibly funny (and perhaps competing) book coming out later in the year. 

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