Tuesday, January 23, 2007

How I Write my Book Reviews

Evelyn Waugh once said that the golden rule of book reviewing is that you should never give a bad review to a book you have not read. This is now seen as rather old-fashioned and romantic. No book reviewer ever has time to read the whole book, not for the money they are paying you. The vital thing is to give the impression that you HAVE read the whole book.

This can easily be done by only quoting from near the end of the book.

And by pointing out an error.
Miles Kington gives some advice on how to write a book review.
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If you follow Kington's advice your reviews may read a bit like these.

1 comment:

Anita Vachharajani said...

hello dearie, i beg ta differ! i review books and am a scrupulous reviewer - making notes and putting in flags, etc... i love all your posts usually, but am worried by the tone of this one ;) i know reviews don't pay too much, but hey, who else will pay to let you do the one thing you love unconditionally in life (bitching, that is, and oh yeah, reading too!)?