What we do

And by “we,” I mean book reviewers.

My colleague/competitor James Bailey posted this entry about the dilemmas we face when writing about the blood, sweat, and tears of authors on his own baseball book blog:

A great book will usually sink its claws into me pretty quick, pronouncing itself a cut above its peers within a chapter or two. Depending upon the hype, I may begin with high expectations or none at all. I think I enjoy it best when a relative unknown connects. The reviews almost write themselves in my head as I read, and I enjoy championing the author’s work to a new audience.

Bad books, unfortunately, are just as apparent. Their insipidity multiplies as the pages turn-often quite slowly-leaving me searching for positives with which to balance a potential review. Some reach the proverbial car-wreck status, where I’m forced to keep reading only by the sheer masochism of wanting to see how much worse things can get.

Assuming I make it to the end, I’m left with a dilemma: how to honestly convey my opinion to the readers without being unduly harsh or negative. After all, even bad books were somebody’s baby. The author likely put a lot of time and effort into writing it. And, of course, others may not agree with my assessment.

Bailey says he’s “punted” a few times, rather than giving a negative review, especially if it came from a smaller publishing outfit. I agree, to a point, which I told him in the form of a comment on his blog.

Basically, I said the responsibility of the reviewer is overwhelmingly to the reader ( he thinks it’s both reader and author), who ostensibly spends the money based on the recommendation. I’ve seen my fair share of terrible writing, egregious factual mistakes, poor proofreading and copy-editing (of which I have been guilty myself  on more than a few occasions). It’s almost like those poor souls who for years have been told they have a nice singing voice and then wind up getting skewered on American Idol.

That said, I’ve always maintained that reviewing is very subjective. I might think a certain book is a masterpiece, while Bailey might think its main function is to serve as fireplace material, and vice versa.

I imagine he and I are are in similar situations in that authors who don’t have the resources or clout that comes from a major publishing house have to do their own promotion and seek any outlet they can find, including small-fish sites like ours, devoted to the written baseball word. I don’t know about Bailey, but this is not my “day-job”; this is a labor of love. So should I spend whatever time I have left on this earth struggling through material I think is poorly done and gushing over it by there mere fact that it has been published?

Does any of this make sense? I ran out of coffee a few hours ago and feel I’m just rambling…