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Welcome
This is a
web site about book reviewing. I started
it to introduce my book: Faint Praise: The Plight
of Book Reviewing in America, and if you click on the book’s title (here or on my home page), you’ll find a
description of the book, a table of contents, and links to many of the reviews
the book has received. But I’ve since
expanded the site to include a Bibliography of
Book Reviewing, which I thought readers might find useful, and a
page of Quotations About Book Reviewing,
which I thought readers might find entertaining. I’ve also added a brief biographical
note, with links to some of my earlier essays on reviewing.
Faint Praise, published
in 2007, is a critique of traditional reviewing: its virtues, its problems, and
its failings. I wrote the book to
address many issues in the field I believe are too often overlooked. These range from the selection of books
chosen to be reviewed (why these?), to the choice of reviewers to critique them
(why them?), to the kinds of criticism we get (most especially, why so much
praise?).
Readers
depend upon reviews. Writers do as
well. My aim has been both to take
readers behind the scenes of reviewing so that they can better assess the
opinions they’re getting, and to provoke critics and editors into improving a
field that is much in need of improvement.
As reviewing moves online, this is precisely the time to evaluate the
book reviewing we have had and aim for something better.
I welcome
your thoughts, queries, and criticism—please send them along: Gail
Pool.