book review musings
Nov. 2nd, 2005 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahIf 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.
Reviewing for Kirkus Reviews is wonderful. My main dislike is that there are too few books. I get fewer words than I would like; I find it excessively aggravating that I get as many words to describe a simply illustrated 32 page picture book as I do to describe a 400 page young adult anthology. That, sadly, is the result of business decisions. I will give the word limitations props in teaching me how to be concise, had to say things more simply, how to incorporate judgmental statements into synopses. Not long ago I tried to write a 1000-word review and no longer knew how to do it.
The other thing I love about reviewing for Kirkus is the brutal honesty I'm allowed. If a book is flawed, I can talk about how. This is more rare in the world of children's reviewing than you would think. Partly because children's book reviews are often allotted so little space in print publications, with the best of intentions many journals focus on reviewing the high-quality books they want to encourage people to read. I actually think this makes perfect sense, but the end result is that children's book reviews are often overwhelmingly positive, because they are of, in general, high-quality books. In Kirkus, we can talk about what's wrong with the book. We can even call it a waste of trees, though not quite in those words. (Though this ties back into my complaint about review length. The shorter the review, the more weight a negative statement carries. Think about it: in 1000 words, the phrase "despite stilted dialogue", can be balanced by 997 other words discussing what's positive about the book. In 150 words, you don't get that. Shorter reviews make it much harder to honestly discuss what's broken about a book you would like to praise overall. Often, the limited length I'm allowed makes me want to write papers about the books that I review.)
Reviewing for the Horn Book Guide is an entirely different animal. First of all, the HBG reviews every hardcover publication in United States. By necessity, they review some really terrible books. The books I'm sent to review are perforce much less fun. Moreover, reviews are limited to 60 words, and must include a numerical score from 1-6.
Now, there's a lot I really like about reviewing for the HBG. For one thing, dude, it's the Horn Book. Sure, it's not the Horn Book Magazine, but can I complain that I'm on their radar? No, of course not. Though certainly I can complain about how difficult it is to attempt to impress the HBM editorial staff when I'm writing 60 word reviews about rotten 32 page nonfiction manuals churned out by staff writers. (Nothing against staff or for-hire writers inherently; I think a few read this journal and you guys are awesome. But sometimes one comes into the pile where you can see the writing process, you can see that the writer had a sheet of paper that said "four web sites, four books, 10 footnotes, and use this kind of pop-up/call out on at least three pages", and the author took about an hour and a half to produce exactly that. Others in the same format can work just fine.)
Additionally, the HBG serves a very useful purpose. By providing capsule reviews with numeric scores of every book published, as well as a fairly comprehensive subject index, it can be an invaluable tool for librarians and teachers struggling to spend a collection development budget effectively. It's all well and good to say that your library should stock 10 copies of Michael Rosen's Sad Book, but there's also a place in your library for staff-written biographies of scientists and generic fantasy novels, and you'd like to make sure that you get the good ones and not those with unreadable graphic design, poorly researched sources, or turgid prose. I enjoy being part of such a valuable process.
But there's a rub. The Magazine only has room to review 800 books a year. And as a general rule, books that rank as ones or twos on that 1-6 numeric scale get reviewed in the HBM, as well as getting capsule reviews in the HBG. ...Do you see the problem coming? The HBM review limitation is somewhat flexible, but for the most part it's set, like Kirkus' word lengths, by business considerations. There's only so many issues a year, and only so many pages per issue. That means that simple practical considerations prevent the HBM/HBG staff from considering more than 800 books a year to be ones (outstanding, noteworthy in style, content, and/or illustration) or twos (Superior, well above average). What if there's a particularly good year? What if there's 1200 outstanding books one year? Now, I'm only a staff reviewer. I'm sure there are circumstances under which the editorial staff will allow book to be rated as a 1-2 without getting a HBM review, I just don't know what those circumstances are. Similarly, I haven't been reviewing for them long enough to know what kind of book constitutes a 6 (unacceptable in style, content, and/or illustration). A couple of times I've rated abook as a 6 and had them modify my rating to 5, so their notion of unacceptable must be extremely strict, and I just haven't learned it yet. My new theory is that if I would rather a child were reading a milk carton than the book in question, it's a 6, but I've not yet asked.
The end result of all this is that my actual numerical range to play with is 3-5. And since I do strongly believe in the value of these numerical evaluations, suddenly assigning them becomes a major source of trauma for me. Three evaluative numbers available which will have major effect on collection development budgets. I'm telling you, it's enough to make a girl grateful that the reviews I turn in our occasionally edited into text that's not mine at all, and the numerical values changed. Not 100 percent grateful, because hey, that's my name on those words, and I didn't save them, but still, I appreciate that people are looking closely at my evaluations before printing them.
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.
Reviewing for Kirkus Reviews is wonderful. My main dislike is that there are too few books. I get fewer words than I would like; I find it excessively aggravating that I get as many words to describe a simply illustrated 32 page picture book as I do to describe a 400 page young adult anthology. That, sadly, is the result of business decisions. I will give the word limitations props in teaching me how to be concise, had to say things more simply, how to incorporate judgmental statements into synopses. Not long ago I tried to write a 1000-word review and no longer knew how to do it.
The other thing I love about reviewing for Kirkus is the brutal honesty I'm allowed. If a book is flawed, I can talk about how. This is more rare in the world of children's reviewing than you would think. Partly because children's book reviews are often allotted so little space in print publications, with the best of intentions many journals focus on reviewing the high-quality books they want to encourage people to read. I actually think this makes perfect sense, but the end result is that children's book reviews are often overwhelmingly positive, because they are of, in general, high-quality books. In Kirkus, we can talk about what's wrong with the book. We can even call it a waste of trees, though not quite in those words. (Though this ties back into my complaint about review length. The shorter the review, the more weight a negative statement carries. Think about it: in 1000 words, the phrase "despite stilted dialogue", can be balanced by 997 other words discussing what's positive about the book. In 150 words, you don't get that. Shorter reviews make it much harder to honestly discuss what's broken about a book you would like to praise overall. Often, the limited length I'm allowed makes me want to write papers about the books that I review.)
Reviewing for the Horn Book Guide is an entirely different animal. First of all, the HBG reviews every hardcover publication in United States. By necessity, they review some really terrible books. The books I'm sent to review are perforce much less fun. Moreover, reviews are limited to 60 words, and must include a numerical score from 1-6.
Now, there's a lot I really like about reviewing for the HBG. For one thing, dude, it's the Horn Book. Sure, it's not the Horn Book Magazine, but can I complain that I'm on their radar? No, of course not. Though certainly I can complain about how difficult it is to attempt to impress the HBM editorial staff when I'm writing 60 word reviews about rotten 32 page nonfiction manuals churned out by staff writers. (Nothing against staff or for-hire writers inherently; I think a few read this journal and you guys are awesome. But sometimes one comes into the pile where you can see the writing process, you can see that the writer had a sheet of paper that said "four web sites, four books, 10 footnotes, and use this kind of pop-up/call out on at least three pages", and the author took about an hour and a half to produce exactly that. Others in the same format can work just fine.)
Additionally, the HBG serves a very useful purpose. By providing capsule reviews with numeric scores of every book published, as well as a fairly comprehensive subject index, it can be an invaluable tool for librarians and teachers struggling to spend a collection development budget effectively. It's all well and good to say that your library should stock 10 copies of Michael Rosen's Sad Book, but there's also a place in your library for staff-written biographies of scientists and generic fantasy novels, and you'd like to make sure that you get the good ones and not those with unreadable graphic design, poorly researched sources, or turgid prose. I enjoy being part of such a valuable process.
But there's a rub. The Magazine only has room to review 800 books a year. And as a general rule, books that rank as ones or twos on that 1-6 numeric scale get reviewed in the HBM, as well as getting capsule reviews in the HBG. ...Do you see the problem coming? The HBM review limitation is somewhat flexible, but for the most part it's set, like Kirkus' word lengths, by business considerations. There's only so many issues a year, and only so many pages per issue. That means that simple practical considerations prevent the HBM/HBG staff from considering more than 800 books a year to be ones (outstanding, noteworthy in style, content, and/or illustration) or twos (Superior, well above average). What if there's a particularly good year? What if there's 1200 outstanding books one year? Now, I'm only a staff reviewer. I'm sure there are circumstances under which the editorial staff will allow book to be rated as a 1-2 without getting a HBM review, I just don't know what those circumstances are. Similarly, I haven't been reviewing for them long enough to know what kind of book constitutes a 6 (unacceptable in style, content, and/or illustration). A couple of times I've rated abook as a 6 and had them modify my rating to 5, so their notion of unacceptable must be extremely strict, and I just haven't learned it yet. My new theory is that if I would rather a child were reading a milk carton than the book in question, it's a 6, but I've not yet asked.
The end result of all this is that my actual numerical range to play with is 3-5. And since I do strongly believe in the value of these numerical evaluations, suddenly assigning them becomes a major source of trauma for me. Three evaluative numbers available which will have major effect on collection development budgets. I'm telling you, it's enough to make a girl grateful that the reviews I turn in our occasionally edited into text that's not mine at all, and the numerical values changed. Not 100 percent grateful, because hey, that's my name on those words, and I didn't save them, but still, I appreciate that people are looking closely at my evaluations before printing them.
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.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-02 05:49 pm (UTC)Preach it, sister. I HATE HATE HATE this. Because Tim Berners-Lee didn't know jack squat about typesetting, now we have to see his godawful design decisions reproduced in print, even when we know better? Gaaaaaaah.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-08 06:50 am (UTC)