{"id":54,"date":"2009-11-10T22:53:09","date_gmt":"2009-11-10T15:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/?p=54"},"modified":"2009-12-24T04:34:35","modified_gmt":"2009-12-23T21:34:35","slug":"book-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/?p=54","title":{"rendered":"Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

FD loves book reviews — and is sorry that so many newspapers and magazines are reducing the number of reviews they publish. \u00a0Reviews can talk one into and out of a book purchase, and are much better than trying to judge a book by its cover or by its jacket blurbs. \u00a0FD keeps a small notebook filled with books that sounded interesting based on a reading of a review, and has seldom been disappointed when using those notes to choose a volume. \u00a0But even when a review turns one off a book, it may be, in itself, a delightful bit of reading. \u00a0Good reviews come in many forms. \u00a0Some hew closely to the book, others use the book as a jumping off place, what they have in common is good writing and ideas that are of interest in themselves. \u00a0Sometimes, of course, FD reads a book before seeing any reviews of it, and then wonders how others felt about it. \u00a0The Complete Review <\/a> is a great source of reviews \u00a0(its blog, the\u00a0Literary Saloon, is great too, and is linked over there on the blogroll)<\/p>\n

Just yesterday, FD had a shortish wait at a medical office, and whiled away the time reading the NY Times Book Review of November 8. \u00a0The cover review, of the new Stephen King novel, was somewhat ho-hum — FD isn’t sure what made a new SKing novel front page material. \u00a0Much more interesting to FD was David Kirby’s review<\/a> of a new book of poetry by \u00a0Amy Gestler, Dearest Creature.<\/em> The review was so compelling that FD is even considering buying the book, even though $18.00 for 84 pages seems a bit much for a paperback that may not, in fact, be filled with poems that one will want to memorize. \u00a0But, really, it was the review itself that put a smile on FD’s face, there was so much energy in that review, \u00a0so much generosity, so much good writing in a small space.<\/p>\n

Not that positive reviews are always the most fun. \u00a0Just the opposite, a great hatchet job can be even more enjoyable. \u00a0Francine Prose knows how to do those, so does Joe Queenan, and of course, Christopher Hitchens.<\/p>\n

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FD loves book reviews — and is sorry that so many newspapers and magazines are reducing the number of reviews they publish. \u00a0Reviews can talk one into and out of a book purchase, and are much better than trying to judge a book by its cover or by its jacket blurbs. \u00a0FD keeps a small […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/foliodeux.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}