The plauge of long, vague book reviews, and what I plan to do about it

So many book reviews these days take almost as long to read as the books themselves. While many of these reviews are insightful and worthwhile pieces of writing in their own right, they aren’t useful to many readers. When I read a book review, I want to know whether the book is worth my reading time without spending too much of my reading time on the review. With most reviews, I inevitably find myself skipping over all the linguistic gymnastics to get to the punch line.

And about that punch line—many reviews just don’t have one anymore. This is particularly true in the case of less-than-stellar books. When did it become bad form in the book reviewing world to actually have a strong, negative opinion about a book?

In this blog, I plan to post short reviews (100 words or fewer) containing real opinions.