I’ve been a bit less prolific than usual in terms of doing and writing stuff that appears in other places over the last year or so, for a bunch of reasons that sound whiny and self-pitying when I try to type them out, so I won’t. That lull is about to end, as I’ve got one magazine piece due to appear online next week, another in edits and slated for fall, and a third whose status is a little more ambiguous, but that ought to appear Real Soon Now. Then there’s another thing whose writing is my primary task for next week, and a third magazine piece that doesn’t have a firm deadline yet but will be done sometime in the Fall. And I’m more or less decided on writing up an actual book pitch around the historical interviews I’ve been doing.
One of the pieces in the pipeline is a book review, and as it turned out, I wasn’t wild about the book in question. It wasn’t the kind of visceral hate that might produce an entertainingly vicious review, just a milder “This book is really not for me.” This is a thing that happens somewhat regularly, most recently with David Rooney’s About Time when I reviewed it on my Forbes blog. In that specific case I was worried that it was going to be too similar to my own book, A Brief History of Timekeeping, but what it’s actually doing is so different from my book that I was almost not interested in it at all.
That sort of review is kind of a tough needle to thread, because as I said in my recent Oppenheimer reactions post, I find “This work is terrible because it should’ve been about something completely different” one of the least worthwhile classes of Takes. The choice of topic is one of the most important and absolute authorial prerogatives, and there are few things I reflexively resent more than being told that I should write about some particular topic in a way that reflects somebody else’s priorities. If you want it written exactly your way, Substack is free: have at it. If you want me to write something for you, you’re getting something that reflects my tastes and priorities, because otherwise what’s the point of hiring me?
(This is, of course, a position I’m able to take because I have an academic day job that pays the bills, and anything I write for separate publication is just bonus beer money. I’d probably be more mercenary if I were counting on freelance checks to make next month’s rent, but I suspect it would still rankle.)
At the same time, though, somebody offered to pay me to write about this book, and I agreed to do it, so backing out completely would’ve been awkward. Which means writing a review that amounts to “I recognize that this is doing a particular Thing, and here is how it succeeds or fails on those terms, even though that Thing is not something I particularly want.”
Of course, threading this particular needle is something I have a good deal of experience with, as it feels like my tastes and interests have been about 30 degrees off those of the wider culture for the better part of 20 years now. This has been particular true in pop culture where we’ve had a loooong run of books and movies that are sorta-kinda in a zone that I ought to be into that just don’t work for me. It’s moved in that direction in non-fiction, too, over the last 5-10 years, where the kind of thing I would most like to read (and am most inclined to write) just doesn’t get much play. The most obvious result of this is that I read less than I used to, but it’s also given me a lot of practice at writing ambivalent reviews.
I do sometimes wonder, though, if I ought to stop threading that needle, and run to one extreme or the other. Either start declining offers when a work doesn’t click for me, or become a “This sucks because it doesn’t pander to my exact preferences” polemicist. The latter would be more lucrative, to be sure, but I suspect I’d end up kind of hating myself if I went down that road.
Anyway, that’s been on my mind a bit since I wrote that Oppenheimer post, and writing this will hopefully clear that out so I can get on to the next thing. And I suspect this will post far enough in advance of the review in question running that it won’t be screamingly obvious what book I’m talking about. Though I don’t write all that many book reviews, so…
I will undoubtedly link to the review in question in a future time-in-review post, so if you’d like to see how I finesse that, here’s a button:
And if you have thoughts on the ethics of writing book reviews that you’d like to share, the comments will be open:
One of my hobbies is writing book reviews of just about everything I read. I make a distinction between books that were badly written and books that were not at all to my taste. Often I end with a paragraph like "read this if ...".
There are a few patterns that I never like, and I mostly avoid reading them entirely. One of them results in a prejudice against "science writers" and "science journalists" - works by such an author need a really strong recommendation from someone else before I touch them, or prior good experience with the author.
That bête noire is science books that are really about people. First we read about what the first interviewee is wearing, then a bit about his background, then what his office is like. This is followed by a couple of snippets of the science the book is ostensibly about, followed by a comment about the weather. Then the author expresses her emotional reaction to the information received, personifying lab equipment or non-animate research subjects in the process. (Volcanoes have feelings?! Who knew?) Then on to the next interview, with a couple of comments about the trip to reach it.
I presume there's a market for these books, because they seem to be more common than real science books for non-specialist readers. So my audience - fellow avid readers who use these reviews as a source of reading suggestions - might include someone who'd utterly love a book like this. I make sure that they - and those who agree with me - both know what kind of book I'm describing. And I include relevant details like whether the science appears inaccurate (even to an intelligent, well-read non-specialist) whether the book has footnotes, and whether any of the scientific information was actually new to me. But I rarely get any kind of reaction to these reviews.
I do get reactions to my other reviews. I have fun skewering books and authors for inaccuracy, tendentiousness, polemic intent, and/or incoherence. And I positively love writing reviews for books that are especially good. Best of all are those that are mostly good, but with issues I want to point out.
But I'm a completionist. I even write mini-reviews when I abandon a book, explaining why I decided the book wasn't worth the effort. I imagine that in some cases someone else might take my objections as a recommendation.
And I write on a site specifically devoted to books.
I don't expect others to follow my example. But maybe some of my babbling above might help with books that weren't bad, just not to your taste, if you actually want to review them.
I'll just be positive when I say I find your science oriented stuff the most valuable. For example I'd have liked the Oppenheimer review to be less review (that could just be a hook) than your take on the history of the science of the Bomb!. (What WERE those confects that Oppenheimer could manage because he was Oppenheimer?) So maybe that would be not treading the needed perfectly, but so what?