Steven W. Beattie on Reviewing

A topic he knows very well. All of his answers are quotable, but I particularly like this:

Some editors tell their reviewers to abandon a book if they find that they have little or no affinity for it, and some newspapers and magazines will not print negative reviews. To me, this approach is intellectually dishonest. A good reviewer will be open minded enough to recognize the literary merits in a text that may not be the kind of thing she would choose to read for pleasure or that comes out of a tradition that is foreign to her own experience. A good reviewer recognizes that every act of criticism involves both a subjective and an objective aspect, and is able to conduct an appraisal of a work that (at least implicitly) acknowledges these different levels of reaction to a text.

Amen.