Sunday, June 17, 2007

Review Online

My review of Lorri Neilsen Glenn's Combustion is now online at Quill & Quire. Shortly after I wrote and submitted this review (but before it was published), I received, out of the blue, a very nice email from the book's author. This is one of the downsides of book reviewing: many of the books one doesn't like are written by people that one might very well like. I find it unfortunate that, in some cases, a negative review has made someone dislike me personally, but it's nearly inevitable, it would seem. A few people whose books I've been hard on, to one degree or another, I've become friendly with after the fact, and I treasure those associations. I wish everyone was so adult about it. At any rate, a review is not a discussion between reviewer and author, but reviewer and reader--even if it's not always easy to keep the strands separate.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh man, honestly, that has to really hurt.

The only way to avoid situations like this is to avoid having anything to do with authors entirely.

Works for me!