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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 was published in 2007. 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?).
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 urge readers, critics, authors, and publishers
to read my analysis of the field in Faint Praise—for anyone who cares
about reading, the issues are important, and there is not another book like
it.
I welcome your thoughts,
queries, and criticism—please send them along:
Gail Pool.