7 ms·
The NYT book review is everything book criticism shouldn't be
- EmanuelMcDaniel 2y ago[dead]
- Billywq 2y ago[dead]
- jgalt212 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- janalsncm 2y agoKind of strikes me as fighting over crumbs at this point. It is extremely rare to make money writing books, let alone a living. That’s just a basic consequence of people not reading books as much anymore. (People read more than before, but usually shorter-form content.) And the distribution of books people do read tends to be highly concentrated. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve ever looked at NYT bestseller or any other listicle to find a book. I don’t tend to like the books that “book” people like. Usually I buy a book because someone has specifically recommended it to me, or it is mentioned around a topic I’m interested in.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- karaterobot 2y agoBook sales have been rising year over year, except around the pandemic. Audio and ebook sales make up a lot of that increase. https://wordsrated.com/book-sales-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/book-sales-statistics/
- complaintdept 2y agoTo my knowledge, anything with an ISBN counts towards book sales. It's funny though how many things have an ISBN that you wouldn't call a book. Playing cards, empty notebooks, adult coloring books, etc all count towards book sales. That fad of adult coloring books from about 9 years ago boosted book sales quite a bit. > Adult coloring books were the main driving force behind the rise of adult nonfiction 12% sales growth during the first half of 2016 compared to the first half of 2015. https://wordsrated.com/adult-book-sales-statistics/#:~:text=Adult%20coloring%20books%20were%20the,the%20first%20half%20of%202015 https://wordsrated.com/adult-book-sales-statistics/#:~:text=....
- eduction 2y agoThe chart of book sales, covering just seven years, shows four increases and two declines, with revenue ending up below 2021 in the most recent period. So they have not been “rising year over year.” (The figures for 2027 are obviously projections and don’t count.)
- User23 2y agoThe NYT is notable for having transitioned to very successful online subscriptions business model. This has lead to a subtle but noticeable shift in tone and content to satisfy that subscriber base. One can hardly blame them. The quality of their reporting still remains generally quite high, but you often have to read 20 paragraphs in before they get around to facts many of their subscribers might be put off by.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- somedude895 2y agoI don't read the NYT since I disagree with their politics, but honestly I much prefer news outlets pandering to an audience, with those people's subscription revenue allowing them to create decent quality journalism, rather than them churning out lowest common denominator slop for volume of clicks and ad revenue. Sure, it creates bubbles, but that's always been the case and it's much better than the alternative.
- karaterobot 2y agoYeesh, that was a long one. > there are still some basic principles of reviewing: reviews should in some way let readers know whether or not they should buy or borrow the book ... Most of all, a review should deliver an opinion. I think this is usually interpreted as saying the reviewer should tell me whether a book is bad or good, but I don't want reviewers to do that. Ignore the bad books; let them sink into obscurity on their own. My ideal book review outlet would only showcase books the reviewers personally thought were worthwhile, and the reviews would focus on what the reviewer themselves liked about the book, or (if not liked) at least thought was significant enough to present in their publication. Instead offer me what you think is best, make your case for it it with specifics, and entertain me with your own wit and insight if you can. That's what I want, but I recognize it's probably not what most people look for.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- semolino 2y agoThis is what The Comics Journal does. Any occasional whining / coverage of uninteresting material is usually just about mainstream comics from the Big Two, where a definite golden age has long been defined, and the era vulgaris is a foregone conclusion. Any indy stuff is covered because it's worthwhile, and the review itself is just additional color.
- gerdesj 2y ago[flagged]
- nozzlegear 2y agoI generally agree with your critiques regarding the site and the readability, as someone with mild vision issues myself. Why not use your browser’s reading mode though? I usually do that these days instead of futzing around with web dev tools trying to make somebody’s idea of good design readable.
- TylerE 2y agoI don't like Reading Mode in general because it feels like I lose too much context - like it's too easy to forget what site I'm even on.
- gerdesj 2y agoI've never used it (reader mode) before and I've just taken a peek at it ... ... nope. I'll just not bother. I'm old enough to remember <flash />, and other atrocities against my senses. It's not rocket science making words legible in a browser for most people and allowing for a fair amount of astigmatism and other common issues. I think what is really wrong is imposing ... anything. My eyesight has changed a fair bit through out my life. I've always been short sighted with some astigmatism in my left eye. That stayed largely stable from age 19 (glasses deployed) to around 45. Then my eyesight decided to degenerate quite quickly by also losing close sight too. All a bit of a faff but livable. "Dark mode" is really horrible for me. I had no idea that you can have bright black or bright dark grey! I prefer pastel ("light mode") shades for comfort and dial down the brightness.
- nozzlegear 2y agoJust in an effort to help someone out: you should be able to customize Reader Mode so that the background is pastel. I use Safari's Reader Mode and have it customized to set the background to a comfortable sepia tone (almost like HN's background color), with dark, slightly larger text in a font that I like. And those settings are applied to all sites, they're not something you need to apply to each individual site you visit.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y agoThe NYTBR has been a target for decades. Elizabeth Hardwick wrote "The Decline of Book Reviewing" in Harpers in 1959, and then went on to co-found the NYRB with Robert Silver during a big publishing strike. In general, stuff like this is insanely inside baseball and navel gazing for the book review industry (of which little remains of the old glory days). That said, I don't know anyone into literature who takes the NYTBR seriously. That the Best Seller list is a gamified black box is basically an open secret. The NYTBR, in particular, has become far too interconnected into the MFA-publishing-literature industrial complex. The reviews are so bland and milquetoasty because so much MFA-lit is bland as all hell and the reviews are just marketing. The NYRB and the LRB are orders of magnitude better reading than the NYTBR, even if this article seems to criticize them (unfoundedly, in my opinion) as fuddy or old fashioned. They're not traditional "reviews" in the sense that they usually don't come around to saying whether a book is good or bad, though; they're essays that use the books reviewed as launch vehicles for pushing the ideas in them into new directions or put under a new light. The NYTBR, in contrast, often reads as ad copy or toothless summary (the latter being the plague that has infected nearly all film criticism as well). There has also been a big resurgence in smaller mags, like N+1 (now an elder statesmen of the new upstarts), The Drift, The European Review of Books (heavy focus on translation), and many others that have excellent, lively, criticism. Also subreddits like r/truelit are a great way to expose yourself to new or interesting books. I usually find a book to add to my TBR list once or twice a week. Is the writing always up to par with professional publications? Not always, but sometimes it honestly is. (r/truelit does have a strong slant towards formal experimentation, though, which some people aren't a fan of. People more interested in "the classics" or contemporary-lit can find great recs still in r/literature.)
- 23B1 2y agor/truelit seems even more rampantly political than the NYTBR though. Any tips on filtering that out or finding something similar? Thanks for your post btw, good response.
- adolph 2y agoThis always has something interesting with links to high quality discussion: https://hackernewsbooks.com/ https://hackernewsbooks.com/ (Not affiliated, just an appreciator)
- AlbertCory 2y ago> unspoken traditions about how to read and whom to read and why have taken hold and authors are compelled to write in ways that conform to gendered and racialized expectations or the apparently unrelenting public desire for more trauma memoirs. > In fact, the book industry is increasingly skewed to include only those who can work for free in unpaid internships or for meager salaries supplemented by family or spousal wealth. In fact, if you look at the photos and bios of agents in any literary agency, it's overwhelmingly younger women without obvious career paths, except the one they're on. > its core readership is either the very wealthy or those who aspire to be so These things are all true, but I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the NYT book review section for the trends. Its main function is to provide blurbs for the book's Amazon page. The shallowness of our cultural discourse created that section, not the other way around.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Spivak 2y agoGood article, gives a enjoyably written dressing down of the NYT's culture of elitism. > Give me an opinion, damn it! Now! Or I drop you! I mean that's the core of it, right? You're looking for an opinionated review in a place where the writers are tasked with being objective, what you called "8th grade summary" style. I understand the desire and would prefer it myself, but a shift to opinionated reviews changes the game. The tastes of the reviewer are now front and center and whether or not you find the review valuable is dependent on how similar they are to your own. It's hard to build a long-lasting brand when the tone becomes intertwined with the individual. > The dawn of the internet did not bring about a democratization of book reviews for the better—let us look again at Goodreads as an example of what can happen and then, quickly, look away. We still need critics to review publications that bring in intellectual and other histories while making judgments about books but without fetishizing books or authors. In many ways I thoroughly enjoyed this section. It's truly a blessing to watch an author undermine their entire argument so completely all at once. In a way I suppose it's a compliment, Mr. Nair is so talented at arguing for a position that in a moment of distraction took a wrong turn into the contra and simply kept moving forward without skipping a beat. To build up such a strong foundation and then knock it down like a sandcastle is, if nothing else, entertaining. You're there on the eve of battle inspired to charge in and destroy the ivory tower and evils that precipitated it only to find out the plan is to build a new one, but paint it eggshell this time. And it's not as if eggshell isn't an improvement, ivory is after all stilted and antiquated but-- perhaps we could make the new thing not quite as tall?
- mvdtnz 2y agoThe Economist recently did an analysis of bias on the NYT Best Seller list and (entirely unsurprisingly to anyone with the faintest whiff of objectivity) found it to have a clear political bias. https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/06/11/is-the-new-york-times-bestseller-list-politically-biased https://www.economist.com/culture/2024/06/11/is-the-new-york...
- cageface 2y agoThe NYRB is that very boring family friend who has no idea how to talk to anyone who’s not a tenured professor and consequently spends most of his time in an armchair. We must be reading a different NYRB. The NYRB is one of the few remaining consistently thoughtful and interesting magazines. Nobody has better political coverage now and their book reviews transcend the issues the author of this article laments.
- shuckles 2y agoThe New York Times Book Review and New York Review of Books are different publications.
- cageface 2y agoYep I know. I've been a NYRB subscriber for literally decades. I never read the NYT review.
- zerocrates 2y agoThey are, but the comment you replied to is quoting a part of the article that's offhandedly criticizing the New York Review of Books.
- carabiner 2y agoThe article discusses both.
- Popeyes 2y agoJust like functions, naming your book review publication in New York is hard.
- mturmon 2y agoYeah, that was when I knew for sure that the author is trying to make a point and didn’t care about the facts. I’ve read NYRoB since the 1990s and you are right, they had and have a lot of really good writing and reviews. The thing OP unforgivably misses is that today’s NYRoB is not the same as a decade ago. The editors have changed and it’s noticeably less “clubby” (less, as they used to say, “New York Review of each other’s books”). Also, worryingly thinner? So the characterization in OP is out of date, to the extent that it ever had some truth. Also, what’s the fucking problem with writing at the level of sophistication of a tenured professor? * Also, someone has to toss this quote in somewhere: >> Thirty-six years earlier, disgust with the same ubiquitous, thin gruel [in NYTBR] had prompted Edmund Wilson to declare in the second issue of The New York Review of Books: “The disappearance of the Times Sunday book section at the time of the printers’ strike only made us realize it had never existed.” As quoted in: https://www.cjr.org/cover_story/goodbye_to_all_that_1.php https://www.cjr.org/cover_story/goodbye_to_all_that_1.php
- spacecadet 2y agoFun story. Someone who lived at my address in NYC worked for the NYTBR and we still get pre-release books from publishers several times a year. We tried to contact this person, NYT, no one cares. So, I open them, read the cover letter, and put them out on the side walk with a note, "Free".
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoDude noooo! At least tag them before releasing them! https://www.bookcrossing.com/ https://www.bookcrossing.com/
- dewey 2y agoI've never heard of bookcrossing but it sounds like a fun idea. The website doesn't really do a good job explaining how it works though.
- spacecadet 2y agoI dont think I have ever seen numbers on any of these "books", they often don't have covers... I imagine some of them if reviewed poorly may never even make it to market.
- thejefflarson 2y agoMichiko Kakutani didn't work for the Book Review. She was the chief book critic of the arts section. The Book Review is a separate organization within the NYT, with an entirely separate editing staff. Sure sometimes critics like Kakutani and A.O. Scott would review things there, but it was always an assignment, not representative of the NYTBR. Generally, editors in the NYTBR strive to pick folks who are "interesting" to review the book rather than not, which leads to spicy reviews because they want to sell the Sunday section. This article is confused from the get go.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fngjdflmdflg 2y agoI can't take any article that opens up with an emotional story seriously. I actually don't like NYT, but this lede ruins the article for me. Facts should always come first, or at the very least a some concrete idea about the thesis or main points of the article. Instead I get an emotional appeal. Ironically this is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to find in an NYT feature story.
- jimbob45 2y agoI find it effective when I come into the article predisposed against one side. When that happens, I don’t mind if the author pulls out all of the emotional stops to engage me because I was most likely going to skim it anyway.
- whimsicalism 2y agoif you read a bit further, the author points out the exact same - they are mocking NYRB
- zug_zug 2y ago[flagged]
- michaelmrose 2y agoFlagging because we can all ask ChatGPT to summarize something and posting AI responses degrades the quality of discourse on the site.
- zug_zug 2y agoYou're welcome to flag, but it looks like maybe you're the minority opinion on this. Looks like more people prefer a TL;DR than are upset by it.
- michaelmrose 2y agoNote that the comment is flagged dead now which normally implies multiple readers flagged it. This means if one doesn't have show dead or isn't logged on it is invisible to other users. This basically is exactly what happens to all such comments because they are nearly universally regarded as undesirable on forums. People come here to engage with actual people. Commenters here would rather hear your opinion rather than chatGPTs.
- selimthegrim 2y agoAh, the best of New Orleans based bomb throwing.
- nailer 2y ago> Among the many ill effects: the Book Review tokenizes non-white writers in essentialist ways, reducing them to mere standard-bearers of their perceived cultures There is a hilarious film right now about a black American writer being forced to do this by liberals. The terrible book he creates takes off and people think he is the caricature.
- tivert 2y ago> There is a hilarious film right now about a black American writer being forced to do this by liberals. The terrible book he creates takes off and people think he is the caricature. This? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Fiction_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Fiction_(film)
- rsynnott 2y agoRare bit of literary criticism criticism. Watch out for the NYT’s literary critic critic critic reviewing Current Affairs, in revenge.
- impure 2y agoThis is the way all writing is going. The best way to get the clicks is to write me-too articles that say nothing and no one can disagree with.
- zogrodea 2y agoI remember this quote from a 1930s book when the topic of book reviews come up, and I think it applies to NYT in particular. "There are critics and reviewers, literary and artistic journals, which ought to be at work mitigating these evils and establishing contact between a writer or painter and the kind of audience he needs. But in practice they seldom seem to understand that this is, or should be, their function, and either they do nothing at all or they do more harm than good. The fact is becoming notorious; publishers are ceasing to be interested in the reviews their books get, and beginning to decide that they make no difference to the sales." The quote is about connecting writers with an audience interested in that kind of work, and allowing writers to receive feedback which will improve the writer's future output, which is a relationship beneficial to both. Without it, writers may be "driven into a choice between commercialism and barren eccentricity". I'm not sure the NYT book reviews help; they may do more damage than there would be without their interference.
- ryukoposting 2y agoThe author characterizes this as a takedown of NYTBR (which I couldn't care less about, frankly), but spends much of the writeup developing criticisms of NYT as a whole, then applying those criticisms specifically to NYTBR. I can't speak for NYTBR specifically, but I think she's on point. I spent 6 months as a NYT subscriber a couple years ago, expecting high-quality journalism and brilliant op-eds, and what I got was largely insular, milquetoast "rich white liberal" lukewarm takes. Why would I pay for that when I can get it by having a conversation with just about anyone in my neighborhood?
- cafard 2y agoI look into the NYT book review most Sundays, though I almost never read the fiction reviews. If the best seller lists are doctored to uphold some standard, I can't imagine what those standards are.