Book Reviews

[DavidW]

and to show off to his fawning audience how much stuff he has, is part of a culture where conspicuous consumption is threatening to overwhelm musical values.

This also happens on booktube and booktok where the reviewers stand in front of massive bookshelves, frequently filled with books they had not read.  And I used to be on the side of this is just conspicuous consumption... but now I think it is just a visual aesthetic to match the theme of the content. 

[Florestan]

This also happens on booktube and booktok where the reviewers stand in front of massive bookshelves, frequently filled with books they had not read.

How do you know that?

[Madiel]

This also happens on booktube and booktok where the reviewers stand in front of massive bookshelves, frequently filled with books they had not read.  And I used to be on the side of this is just conspicuous consumption... but now I think it is just a visual aesthetic to match the theme of the content. 

At one time it was something of a running joke in the Australian legal community that any lawyer would get photographed in front of a particular series of law reports that had very attractive red and black covers. The absolute top tier reports of the High Court were a very drab and dirty brown, so they were no good. You went for these other ones that were fractionally less prestigious in content but looked fabulous.

This was before everything went fully online of course.

[Atriod]

booktok 

I feel like I need to take a shower after reading that word.

[DavidW]

How do you know that?

They admitted it!  Many of them started a "I will not buy more books until I have exhausted my backlog" mission.  The most hardcore of which was Crimonology who required himself to read a whopping 500 books before he bought a single new book.

[DavidW]

At one time it was something of a running joke in the Australian legal community that any lawyer would get photographed in front of a particular series of law reports that had very attractive red and black covers. The absolute top tier reports of the High Court were a very drab and dirty brown, so they were no good. You went for these other ones that were fractionally less prestigious in content but looked fabulous.

This was before everything went fully online of course.

Ha!  There was someone that used to post here that said that on a previous job he had customers that wanted a library but had no intention of reading them.  It reminded me of a character from I think the Great Gatsby that had a library of books whose pages had never been cut!

But the booktokers love reading books.  It just that their appetite exceeded what they could handle. 

Now with Dave Hurwitz we know that he listened to everything on his shelf because he either reviewed them all or spoke with authority about them on his YT channel.

[DavidW]

The Hurwitz of booktube is a guy called Steve Donoghue, and I suspect if you like one, you'll like the other.

Actually I love Steve Donoghue!  But yeah I get what you mean, they are both narcissistic personalities that dominate their corners of YT.  And they both walk the walk.  DH has critically listened to and professionally reviewed so much, same for Steve.  But the difference is that Steve is highly unlikely to pan a book without considering what the author's motivations were.  In fact the only authors I've known for him to bash were Dickens and Cormac McCarthy.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Actually I love Steve Donoghue!  But yeah I get what you mean, they are both narcissistic personalities that dominate their corners of YT.  And they both walk the walk.  DH has critically listened to and professionally reviewed so much, same for Steve.  But the difference is that Steve is highly unlikely to pan a book without considering what the author's motivations were.  In fact the only authors I've known for him to bash were Dickens and Cormac McCarthy.

Funny to see Steve Donoghue mentioned here – I've read him off and on, at his Open Letters site and elsewhere. The salient thing about him is that he claims to read some incredible number of books every year (like, 500 or more). I don't know how anyone can have a deep engagement with a particular book if they whip through them at such an extraordinary rate.

This results in a lot of glib and dismissive reviews. I've never seen him bash Dickens, but he does trash a lot of prominent writers – a partial list would include Roth, Bellow, Updike, Naipaul, DF Wallace, A. Munro, and indeed C. McCarthy. Some of his negative takes are entertaining, but I don't take them too seriously.

[DavidW]

The salient thing about him is that he claims to read some incredible number of books every year (like, 500 or more).

Those are pretty standard numbers for book reviewers.  It is a job not a hobby.  If they (and they do) spend all their time reading and writing they end up reading a lot more than a normal reader does.  Using a fraction of my free time I read a book every 1-2 weeks.  Someone that spends all their time (not just free time) should be able to read 1-2 books a day.

And I guess I have a different impression than you do since I mostly just watch his YT channel.  A 10-20 minute review is not glib and dismissive.  On his channel it is something like 99% of his reviews are positive.  Perhaps you just gravitate towards the negative reviews?

Anyway enough of this tangent or me or one of my colleagues will have to move it to the diner as it is off topic.

[Florestan]

Someone that spends all their time (not just free time) should be able to read 1-2 books a day.

The question is, how well can they understand those books, let alone review them fairly? I am reminded of a Romanian essayist who claimed in his autobiography that he read The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment and War and Peace all during one of his high-school summer holidays. Now, if reading means just that, reading words on a printed page, he might have done it. But if reading implies also understanding, and thinking about, what one reads, I very much doubt he did it. 

[DavidW]

The question is, how well can they understand those books, let alone review them fairly?

The reviewer in question publishes in major newspapers and wrote the forward for the Michael Katz translation of Crime and Punishment.  For any book that he formally reviews he reads the book twice and heavily annotates it.  It is a common criticism that people like to throw around that booktubers, critics etc. don't have time to absorb what they read, but that criticism is without merit.  You can read or watch their reviews and see that most of them walk the walk.

[Florestan]

The reviewer in question publishes in major newspapers and wrote the forward for the Michael Katz translation of Crime and Punishment.  For any book that he formally reviews he reads the book twice and heavily annotates it. 

This takes more than one day for a single book. Two books a day read and heavily annotated seems to me like an exaggerated claim.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

The question is, how well can they understand those books, let alone review them fairly?

Yeah, it's a complicated issue. I think it all depends on 1) the length of the books in question and 2) the type or genre. It doesn't surprise me if somebody with a lot of free time gets through a 200-page science fiction or detective novel in one day. Long, complex works cannot be properly absorbed in this fashion, however.

Woody Allen had a joke about taking a speed-reading class, and when he speed-read War and Peace, the only thing he could say about it was "it was about Russia."

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

This takes more than one day for a single book. Two books a day read and heavily annotated seems to me like an exaggerated claim.

For what it's worth, I read an interview with the Wall Street Journal's main fiction reviewer, Sam Sacks. He said that he reads 1-2 books a week as part of his job.

[Florestan]

For what it's worth, I read an interview with the Wall Street Journal's main fiction reviewer, Sam Sacks. He said that he reads 1-2 books a week as part of his job.

1-2 books a week sounds reasonable. 1-2 books a day strikes me as unrealistic.

[JBS]

The question is, how well can they understand those books, let alone review them fairly? I am reminded of a Romanian essayist who claimed in his autobiography that he read The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment and War and Peace all during one of his high-school summer holidays. Now, if reading means just that, reading words on a printed page, he might have done it. But if reading implies also understanding, and thinking about, what one reads, I very much doubt he did it. 

I did similar reading at that age. I remember reading The Idiot in about a week. War and Peace took longer but I was a little younger (7th grade IIRC) so that (and the length difference of course) would have made a difference.
The trade-off was, I'm heavily introverted so I essentially did nothing else except go swimming for an hour in the afternoon.
Also this worked only for books that interested me. I remember it seemed to take forever to get through Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I did similar reading at that age. I remember reading The Idiot in about a week. War and Peace took longer but I was a little younger (7th grade IIRC) so that (and the length difference of course) would have made a difference.

Getting thru War and Peace in 7th grade is super-impressive.

Also this worked only for books that interested me. I remember it seemed to take forever to get through Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

My standard approach to long novels is "the 50-page test" - i.e. if it doesn't grab me after 50 pages, I give up. Life's too short to stick with a book that bores you. Although if something is a recognized classic, I might stick with it longer.

[JBS]

Getting thru War and Peace in 7th grade is super-impressive.

My standard approach to long novels is "the 50-page test" - i.e. if it doesn't grab me after 50 pages, I give up. Life's too short to stick with a book that bores you. Although if something is a recognized classic, I might stick with it longer.

My mother found a list of Great Books when I was in 5th grade.
It was alphabetical by author, so in 5th grade she handed me a copy of Pride and Prejudice, and told me to start reading. (I missed out on most of the story; I had to wait until I was in college to actually read and understand Austen.)
The list included a lot of normie stuff kids like--Count of Monte Cristo, Ivanhoe, Kidnapped, a bunch of Verne--and I didn't "finish" it until after high school--but I had a lot of reading experience (including a bunch of historical novels not on the list) by the time I got to W&P.

[Florestan]

Much as I love books, I've never been able to read two a day (not even during my childhood or teens, not even Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas or Agatha Christie). I bow to the superior knowledge and abilities of those who can.

I also marvel at the enormous quantity of books available nowadays. To think there was a time when one could pass for a cultured person by having read, and being able to quote from, the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ariosto and Tasso only --- and only after years of study. Today they make for one week reading and one thinks nothing of reading hundreds of books a year. Amazing progress!

[AnotherSpin]

Much as I love books, I've never been able to read two a day (not even during my childhood or teens, not even Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas or Agatha Christie). I bow to the superior knowledge and abilities of those who can.

I also marvel at the enormous quantity of books available nowadays. To think there was a time when one could pass for a cultured person by having read, and being able to quote from, the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ariosto and Tasso only --- and only after years of study. Today they make for one week reading and one thinks nothing of reading hundreds of books a year. Amazing progress!

There are books to read, and there are books to live with.

I usually read pretty quickly, averaging a book a day or two. Another thing is that there are books that I read for many years, not only opening them again, but also finding things in them that I hadn't noticed before. Or noticed, but then saw differently. Or I just need to be with them all the time.