SATURDAY, JANUARY 20, 2007
Blog Ideas – Book reviews (Appreciations)
Start reviewing the books on your reading shelf.
I like what Tom Montag had to say about book reviewing…
I call my commentary on books
“appreciations” and not “reviews.” Why?
I find the term “appreciation” allows me to engage a book on my own terms, and on the book’s terms, rather than in terms of the needs of any perceived audience. Rather than responding to the book for any other reader, I am coming to understand the book for myself. I don’t owe anybody else anything; my obligations are to the book and to myself.
By calling the commentary an “appreciation,” I can engage the book on a personal level, rather than trying to locate it in the grand scheme of literature; I become one reader writing about what he has read, rather than some professional feigning to understand this book in the greater context of all books. I can freely acknowledge how much I don’t know, even as I point to aspects of the book which delight me.
I make no commitments to the bookselling industry, nor to the book-buying public. My commitment is to understanding the book on its own terms within my own limited frame of reference.
I can display my prejudices in a way that a “book reviewer” cannot. I can speak about myself in relationship to the book, and about the book in relationship to me, always in the context of my predilections as a writer and a reader and a pilgrim on this old mudball we call Earth.
By calling my commentary an “appreciation,” yes, I am saying that I don’t owe anyone anything, except for my promise to be honest with myself about the book. Unlike the “review,” my “appreciation” is not trying to “sell” the book; I am trying to understand it. The book I am reacting to doesn’t have to be newly published; it can be several years old or out-of-print. I don’t need to observe any limits as to word count; I don’t have to further any program or literary philosophy. My “appreciation” doesn’t have to fit anyone or anywhere.
I don’t have to hide my ignorance. Indeed, my ignorance becomes part of my response to the book.
As I do not solicit books to review, I do not have to respond to any book that doesn’t move me in some essential way. No publisher can put its hooks into me; no author can make claims on me. I give deference to myself. I am free to surprise myself with my response. I owe no one, and no one owes me.
I do not have to comment on bad books. I don’t have to write about writing that doesn’t engage me. I am free to see the book as it is, as I am. I am free not to respond to a book, if I wish.
I suppose that book reviewing is a necessary evil; yet I don’t have to involve myself in that system. I am carrying nobody’s water but my own.
By calling my book commentary an “appreciation,” I am able to disagree with myself if I wish, to contradict myself when I must, to look at things from the other end of the telescope sometimes, or to overturn the microscope.
There is a great sense of freedom, then, in doing “appreciations” instead of book reviews; yet I am also constrained to tell my personal truth to the best of my ability, for the “appreciation” becomes a measure of myself as well as of the book to which I’m responding. I am always putting my reputation on the line, in addition to the book’s reputation.
The “appreciation” is always about the book and about me in relation to the book.
As I say, I am not selling anything. Yet the reader who chances upon an “appreciation” I have written may thereby come away with his own appreciation of the book. That would be a lovely consequence, but it is not required, I think, for my appreciation to be successful.
November 17, 2006
Source: The Midwesterner: A Writer’s Journal
Add the appreciation (review) to Amazon…Add amazon links to the appreciation.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 2007
Thought for the Day
All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
– The BuddhaOur destiny is in our own hands. Since we are formed by our thoughts, it follows that what we become tomorrow is shaped by what we think today.
Happily, we can choose the way we think. We can choose our feelings, aspirations, desires, and the way we view our world and ourselves. Mastery of the mind opens avenues of hope. We can begin to reshape our life and character, rebuild relationships, thrive in the stress of daily living – we can become the kind of person we want to be.