No, no, no — not here. On The Book Book.
You will note, in the guidelines for reviewers over on the right side of that site’s various pages, the word-count specs: minimum one word; maximum 60,000 words. I believe these were meant humorously, meaning “Nobody’s gonna go through your review and count the freaking words, you dolt.”
Nevertheless, I suffered a bit of a guilty twinge when I saw how long my review looked relative to the other recent ones.
Dang. Gotta tell you, writing a book review is hard. Especially for an action-y book: you want to describe, kinda sorta, what happens. But you don’t want to give away anything really surprising, either. Tough balance to strike. I admire the other Book Book reviewers (also listed down the site’s right-hand menu) who manage to pull it off, review after review.
marta says
I read reviews–even for books I’d never read. But writing them? No way.
Ever read a review in The Atlantic Monthly? They have some long reviews. Do you subscribe to Powell’s Books Review A Day? It’s comes via email and some are brief and some are amazingly long.
Well, some books deserve the effort.
John says
@marta – The Atlantic: yes, long ago and far away!
It was during a brief bout of insanity when I subscribed to that, Harper’s, the NYer, and the NY Review of Books in the belief that this would introduce me to (say) John Updike, John McPhee, Annie Dillard, and so on. (It didn’t work.) Have successfully whittled the list down to just the NYer, which can be no slouch when it comes to mega-reviews.
Never heard of the Powell’s thing; thanks for the heads-up! (I’m a sucker for daily e-newsletters.)