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book review musings
Nov. 2nd, 2005 09:31 amIf I always had this many books on my plate to review, I could support myself doing this. Not very well, I admit.
I've been thinking about what I've liked reviewing for different journals (and disliked). I think in many ways it reflects what I like and dislike about the reviews themselves, and their purposes.
( I ramble on about reviewing )
I have more thoughts, but I'll come to them later. I think I'd like to ramble at some point about terrible nonfiction design. Here's the entire rant in two bullet points: 1. Designing your book to be laid out like an (ugly) web page will not make your book more hip, it will make it unreadable; readability on a 6 x 8 piece of paper is an entirely different beast that on a computer screen with working hyperlinks. 2. Providing web sites in your "further resources" section is a great idea, but you also need to provide references to other materials, and if your footnotes primarily reference non authoritative web sites, then you've identified yourself as a lazy hack.
I've been thinking about what I've liked reviewing for different journals (and disliked). I think in many ways it reflects what I like and dislike about the reviews themselves, and their purposes.
( I ramble on about reviewing )
I have more thoughts, but I'll come to them later. I think I'd like to ramble at some point about terrible nonfiction design. Here's the entire rant in two bullet points: 1. Designing your book to be laid out like an (ugly) web page will not make your book more hip, it will make it unreadable; readability on a 6 x 8 piece of paper is an entirely different beast that on a computer screen with working hyperlinks. 2. Providing web sites in your "further resources" section is a great idea, but you also need to provide references to other materials, and if your footnotes primarily reference non authoritative web sites, then you've identified yourself as a lazy hack.
