It has been suggested to me that my previous post on reviewing might be taken as attacking Jeff VanderMeer’s post and thereby encouraging people to do all of the things he tells reviewers not to do. Please, don’t take it that way. Jeff’s advice is very good. It is particularly good if you want to sell your reviews, because most commercial review venues prefer to avoid controversy and want you to be polite and reasoned. Sure the world includes people like Dale Peck who have made a career out of snark, but they are rare breeds and few venues want to hire someone like that.

If I’m irritable, and it sounds like I probably was, then it is because whenever I see an article like Jeff’s (and seeing three articles about reviewing in one day clearly got my goat) I have this sinking feeling that sooner or later someone is going to rip into a review they disagreed with, taking Jeff’s name in vain as an excuse. Nobody likes exactly the same books, and nobody likes exactly the same style of reviewing. The chances are that somewhere out there you can find someone who writes the sort of reviews you like, and likes the same sort of books that you do. That person will be good for you, but at the same time the existence of that person doesn’t mean that every other reviewer is wrong. They may just be serving different markets.

It appears that it is open season on reviewers again. Yesterday saw posts from Matt Cheney, Jeff VanderMeer and Timmi Duchamp all speculating about what makes a good review, and a response from Jay Tomio that sounded a little tired and grumpy. I suspect I know how Jay feels. Sometimes it seems like the poor reviewer can’t do anything right. And you know, that doesn’t surprise me. Pontification follows.
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One of the hardest things about reviewing books is explaining just why one person’s writing is “good” and another’s is not. Matt Cheney struggles with this question better than anyone else I know. Here he is in fine form.

Andrew Wheeler has been waging a long and lonely campaign against David Itzkoff for many months now. Whether this is the reason that Itzkoff’s column has become so infrequent or not is unclear. However, when Neil Gaiman weighs in I think we can safely say that Mr. Itzkoff’s days are numbered. The offices of the NYT will presumably now be besieged by teenage goth girls demanding Itzkoff’s head. Or at least to be allowed to give him a make-over.

I would, however, like to focus on the last paragraph of that post. Neil is quite right to say that it is stupid of a reviewer to begin a piece by saying that all books of the type he’s reviewing are rubbish except the work in question. However, I think it is perfectly OK to say that you, personally, don’t normally like works of a particular type, but this one was different. No reviewer can be expected to like every type of book, and you don’t always get to review books you like. Besides, if you suddenly find what appears to you to be a real treasure in a genre that doesn’t work for you, you may want to enthuse about it. More to the point, other people who have similar tastes to you may find they like that book too, and they won’t know to try it unless you tell them. And if you review regularly your readers will know your tastes, so they’ll expect an explanation for why you are suddenly enthusiastic about something they expected you to hate.

Neil knows this – that’s why he put in that caveat – but it is a fine distinction and one likely to be lost on people who don’t know much about writing reviews (a group which appears to include Mr. Itzkoff). I’d hate to see reviewers become reluctant to encourage readers to try something new because the great blog-reading public thinks Neil said that you must never admit that certain types of book don’t appeal to you.