Who are your favorite book reviewers?
While reading Tom Bissell's thoughtful, repeated review of the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close yesterday, I remembered how rare it is to find a review like that--an essay that helps you think about literature and writing, rather than telling you "thumbs up, thumbs down" like a movie reviewer spewing 30-second reviews on a bad television program.
I dig book reviews at The Washington Post, The Believer, and The Millions, just to mention a few favorites off the top of my head. Now it's your turn. Leave links and names to your favorite reviewers in the comments section, and I'll publish a post collecting our answers.
To get you thinking, here's a Washington Post review from Christopher Byrd, one of the more thoughtful young reviewers I've met over the last few years. Here, he looks at a novel about an Ethiopian immigrant. Check it out...
"This lends an urgency to their ruminations that believably cleanses their conversation of small talk. In other words, the big ideas of Stephanos and his two African friends about racial politics in America, the necessary accouterments for success, and why colonels make for better dictators than generals don't come off as stilted but as natural byproducts of their exiled condition."
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Louis Menand wrote an awesome review of Mason & Dixon which really identified that book correctly I think as a masterful achievement. Then with Against the Day he seemed utterly baffled but unlike other reviewers who try to sell us a pig in a poke he came out and said so, which leaves him with his respect I think.
The Hood Company
Posted by: Brian Hadd | March 31, 2007 4:45 PM | Permalink to Comment