Comments on: Review Catch-up

By: overwatering : The Complete Polysyllabic Spree

overwatering : The Complete Polysyllabic Spree — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 12:49:37 +0000

[...] This is a book to re-discover your love of reading by. If you’ve been burned by something bad recently pick this up and read a couple of months to re-discover your love. And if your tastes [...]

By: Giles

Giles — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:29:00 +0000

Hmmm... You're right, I went back and read my review of The Blind Assassin and I was quite positive about it. I think I'm probably being overly critical of Canadian literature, purely based on that murder-mystery. OK, I hereby declare that Canadian literature is no longer dead to me.

Thanks for the tip on the Orwell, I've added that to my list of stuff to read. The point about the flaws is definitely correct: rattling those off is largely what I do. It should be possible to say something more sensible about good books though. I'll have to figure out.

By: Dave Cameron

Dave Cameron — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 15:31:00 +0000

Your review of The Blind Assassin was relatively positive... or did I misunderstand? The only Atwood I've read is Oryx and Crake. Very interesting premise and execution, but takes a while to build up steam and has some heavy handed bits.

In an essay from Books v. Cigarettes, George Orwell makes reference to the ease of reviewing bad books over good books. If I recall correctly (I don't have the book with me or I would check), he refers to the idea that a really good book will have a sort of altering experience that is difficult to capture on a page. Particularly if you're going for three sentences or less. A bad book though will have a list of flaws that can be rattled off in any order to fill the required space.

I would recommend Books v. Cigarettes, although it could be that I haven't read enough essays lately. I may need more material to compare it to.