It is Hugo time again at The Guardian’s Book Blog. This time Sam Jordison reviews Larry Niven’s Ringworld. I think Sam pretty much nails it when he says that the Ringworld itself i the star of the book, and the sense of wonder that it generates in the reader is what makes the book work, for those of us for whom it does work.

Of course it won’t work for everyone, and as ever the comments are full of people telling Sam that they didn’t like the book, some of them implying that his review must be “wrong” because of this. There are no books that are universally liked.

Which brings us neatly to a lovely blog post by Glenda Larke about book reviews. Normally I get very tired of bloggers writing about reviews, because such posts consist mainly of people putting forward rules for reviewing, or complaining that reviews are all badly written. Glenda, however, does something new and refreshing. The extracts quotes from a bunch of reviews of her latest book and juxtaposes them. The range of opinions is delightfully varied.