Over the next month and a half, I’ll be reviewing three new works of fiction, two novels and one book of novellas. I’ve started, and am almost done with the first novel, a quest narrative that takes place in numerous locations including South Korea, Japan, New Jersey, New York, Indonesia, Thailand, and other locales. I’ve never met the writer, though she participated in my yearly Taos gathering during one of the years I couldn’t make it. Either way, I’m excited about doing the reviews—to date, I’ve only done a handful, and the last one I did was for a nonfiction book, Jennifer Vanderbes’s excellent Wonder Drug: The Secret History of Thalidomide in America and Its Hidden Victims. If you didn’t get a chance to read the review, you can find it here. It truly is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read in years.
But back to the work behind book reviews, and how writing book reviews can help you with your own writing. As I’ve been taking notes on the first novel, it occurred to me that while I’m reviewing a book for the ultimate benefit of potential readers, I’m benefiting from the process myself. One of the truisms of writing is that when you’re a writer, you’re never not learning. I don’t care if you’re in CRW 1101 and it’s your first ever fiction writing class, or if you’re writing your thirtieth book—every word, every sentence, every chapter we read and analyze helps improve our own writing in more ways than we can imagine.
We all know the term “reading as a writer,” and it exists for a reason: because while we dive into literature because we enjoy books, we also read, as writers, to learn how other writers make the words on the page work for them (and for us). Whenever I hear a writer say they don’t read, I want to bang my head against the wall, because if you don’t read, you shouldn’t expect to write well. You may have the ingredients, but I’ll put money on the fact that you don’t have the recipe. Or at least not a good one.
When I review books, I read the book twice—the first time for the sheer enjoyment and experience of the book, the second time with a critical eye towards what worked and, in my opinion, what didn’t work. It probably makes sense to most book reviewers that you should read a book more than once, but I learned the practice years ago while workshopping novels and having my novels workshopped. It’s good practice, because you’re approaching a book, whether fiction or nonfiction, with different eyes and with a different purpose. The first readthrough let’s you know if you enjoy(ed) the book. Meaning was it a fun read? Did you want to know what happens to the hero over each chapter (assuming the novel has chapters)? Did you turn the pages yearning for more? Or was your experience something other than that? On the second read, however, we’re reading as writers. We’re asking ourselves questions non-writers don’t necessarily ask themselves as they turn the pages.
On our second read, when we’re reading as writers, we ask questions like, Do the characters pull me in? Is the voice a compelling and hopefully original voice? Is there a plot? Is the structure of the novel a structure I’m comfortable with? Or does it get in the way of what the author is trying to accomplish? When I’m reading dialogue, do the characters come off as real to me? Or do they come off as caricatures of people the author knows little about, i.e., if the characters are from Boston, do they have Boston accents? Use the proper dialect? Know Boston’s history, its quirks the different neighborhoods? To do a review, we must ask ourselves these questions as well as many others so that we can offer a sound assessment of our author’s work. What we shouldn’t do, however, as writers, that is, is waste the opportunity to learn from the author’s strengths and from their weaknesses. We’re already spending time with another author’s work—why not take advantage of what we’re doing for our own writing?
On the second read, however, we’re reading as writers. We’re asking ourselves questions non-writers don’t necessarily ask themselves as they turn the pages.
As writers, we know the struggles other writers have. We know our fellow writers probably have jobs like we do (or most of us, anyway). We know they have children, or commitments that eat into their writing time. We know they have bad days and good days, days when they write ten thousand words and days when they sit staring blankly at their computer screens wishing and hoping to get a sentence or two down before slamming their face into the keyboard out of frustration. Yet even with all that, we can force ourselves to identify and appreciate the musicality of the author’s writing. We can admire the craftsmanship of the hooks the author has written, likely after many, many edits, that pull us into the author’s work. We can marvel at the way the book’s themes are constructed by the author with such subtlety and finesse that it makes us want to sob with envy. I forget who said it, but a writer I once read was asked how he felt about another writer’s success. The writer replied something to the effect of, Well, I hope he gets hit by a truck. Funny, certainly. But his view ignores what he might’ve learned from that writer’s book.
Reading as writers requires us to be open to learning how other writers handle the same situations we’re struggling with as we write our own novels and fiction. And there’s not only nothing wrong with that; it’s what we need to do to become better writers every time we sit down at our desk to create our fictive worlds. For me, writing book reviews is just another tool in my tool belt. Reviews help me teach myself writing while I’m writing, just the way seminars do. Just the way workshopping my work does. The way reading books on the craft of writing do. These things are all tools that help us continue our never-ending quest for knowledge. In our case, knowledge about how to write the best books and fiction that we can. We may have surpassed the 10,000-hour rule of learning our craft, but that means little to the consummate professional. And that’s what we are—professional. We sit our asses in our chairs, and we write. Every day.
In terms of book reviews, they come in many flavors and sizes. The best book reviews, in my opinion, provide readers and potential readers of a novel not only a deep understanding of the genre and history of books in the same vein as the book being reviewed, but they are also honest and, hopefully, project the enthusiasm the reviewer has for the book they’re reviewing. No one wants to read a bad review anymore than anyone wants to read a bad book. We know bad reviews are out there, and we know, often, that for one reason or another they’re merited. But still, we’re a community of readers. We want to enjoy the books that are published and available to us, and when we’re dissuaded by reviewers, it hurts not only the writer, but also, often, ourselves, because we may put too much weight and emphasis on what the reviewer has written. But we learn over time who to trust, and hopefully we all find a reviewer who leads us in the right direction more times than not.
No one wants to read a bad review anymore than anyone wants to read a bad book.
Too often, I feel, certain reviewers lack tact or nuance or, really, just common decency. Are there books out there that I’d prefer never saw the light of day? Of course. Probably more than less. I have hundreds upon hundreds of books on my bookshelves and in boxes that I’ve never read. Or that I’ve started and stopped ten, twenty, two hundred pages in. I want to give published books every opportunity to entertain me. To impress me. To remind me what authors can do with words that got me interested in being a writer in the first place. It won’t always happen. But no one needs to have their soul crushed because of someone’s subjective opinion. Someone believed in the book enough to send it up the chain. And the folks up the chain believed in the book too, at least enough to put the resources behind the book to get it published. Remember, James Joyce’s Dubliners was rejected 18 times. Golding’s Lord of the Flies 21 times. Margaret Mitchell’s classic Gone with the Wind was rejected nearly 40 times. 40! So, it’s not necessarily a matter of whether or not the book is good but whether or not certain agents and then editors believed it was, enough to invest time, energy, and money into seeing the book succeed.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that book reviews are a great way to not only contribute to the writing community in a positive way; they’re also a fantastic practice toward improving your own writing. What’s that old saying? Good writers borrow, great writers steal? As reviewers, book reviews force you to study what makes a book good while also highlighting where the author could use some improvement. As the reviewer, you’re teaching yourself what works and what doesn’t work without having to be the one whose work is being scrutinized. It’s an opportunity to study something that you’re far enough away from that you can be honest and impartial about when discussing, in your opinion, whether or not the work is worth spending a day, a week, a month with, but also, optimistically, you’ll be doing something even more important for your own writing: picking up a few new tricks in the process.
Cully Perlman is an author, a blogger, and a Substantive Editor (SE). He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com or Cullyperlman@gmail.com
I've been doing them for years, and agree. Plus my library grows with each one.