How Amazon Ruined the Book Review
Why I’m Glad I Learned to Write Before Kindle
Back in the day, if you’d studied writing at one of England’s great universities, you would have come away with the skills of a novelist but also a poet, essayist, and literary thinker. The dons prepared you for a life in letters. They believed a writer must excel in all aspects of the written word.
When you published your work, it was subject to the weight of serious literary criticism.
Writers steeped in the canon (meaning they’d read everything worth reading) would give their analysis based on a lifetime deep reading to find its proper place in history. The dustbin or the hallowed perch of academia.
Thanks to Amazon opening up the job of book critic to the consumer, now we have thoughtful comments such as, “OMG, I lurrrrved this book.” Or, “Meh! Amazon makes me write 20 words so Meh twenty times.” How times have changed.
I’ve been accused of reading milk cartons when nothing else was available, so no surprise I devoured book reviews early on.
I’d read The New Yorker book reviews before looking at the cartoons, and I subscribed to the New York Times Sunday Book Review for…
