You want to know what I thought of that book?

[kyburg]

First off, if you want more details on what I'm about to talk about - go get the book I'm going to talk about. Because the point of this exercise? Is a review. Not a critique. You don't know the difference? I'm not surprised. Here, come over here and I'll give it to you the way I got it back in the ollllld days.

See, back when there was no internet for you to find your pr0n fan fiction to read?

It took about 1.5 - 5 years, about five grand of your own money and as many good friends who could write, draw or otherwise flunky for you to have something to read. And then? Maybe there would be 200 copies or so - that you'd have to sell to make back your five grand - and that was it. Oh, and that fanzine of yours? Might have ten stories in it. (BTW, do the math. Add $$ for shipping. OW.)

So, about two years, a buncha money, hope you knew about it (maybe even wrote something for it) and you got ten stories to read. Maybe you'd even like a couple of them.

That's it.

You might imagine what the Yuletide archives look like to me. *cue 2001 overture*

But one of the side effects of that kind of output? You didn't write more stories to outline your opinion of this or that to prove your point - flames? Bah. Carefully banked coals, more like it.

You wrote a critique. Maybe you were stupid enough to call it a review, but then you'd get the likes of Paula Smith, Jan Lindner, Signe Landon, Connie Faddis, Marian Kelly, Teri White and Melanie Rawn down on your ass bitchslapping you into coherence, explaining quite plainly what a review IS and IS NOT.

Now, most of us welcomed critques - but it was expected that you would take such treatment as a means to improve, because as fan fiction writers...that was what we were here for, after all. It's nice to play, but we're doing this to get better and be Real Writers ourselves someday. (Two of those people who lavished much abuse on me back in the day for my own good actually made it. D'ya know who? I still have my zines they wrote. Yes, I do.)

So when somebody asks me to review, even casually - I take it very seriously that there are some things I'm not going to do.

1. A review is not intended to provide feedback for improvement. You don't take something out of the work, turn it over in your hands and go 'yanno, this color blue doesn't match the drapes - it might need some work.'

2. You might discuss the entire plot in a critique. It is verboten in a review. Subject matter, sure. Who, what, when, why and how - as briefly as possible, and don't give anything away.

3. A review is designed to provide the reader with information that will entice them to read the entire work on their own. A critique is for the author's primary use as a means to correct, enhance or go 'hmmm' a lot. So be aware of your focus and your intended audience. (People who write critiques in forums calling them 'reviews' being just plain passive-agressive whiny-weenies get the special hell - and lots of raw egg shampooes. *pulls eyelid in their general direction*)

4. A review is nearly transparent as far as style is concerned. If I write a review, you shouldn't notice me. A review is impersonal space and really? An opinion is not required. It's expected that you would rate a review these days - but in my experience and training? Is not expected and is considered an intrusion of your opinion into a place where it doesn't belong. You want to tell the author what you think? You tell the author, if you've gotten persmission to do a critque - oh, and make sure you can back that opinion up, bucko.

So now that I've said that, I can start saying other things. Be right back.

Comments

[turandot.livejournal.com]

You make a pretty good point.

Donna, it's one thing to want people to do their own research, but if you're trying to persuade them to agree with your point of view, or to indeed know where your opinion is coming from, you might want to give them a starting point for their research other than "Go read the book" without actually mentioning its title or who wrote it.

Sorry, this is kind of a pet peeve of mine. You'd be surprised by the sort of dusty tomes I've tracked down upon being suggested to do so... but I have to know what to look for to get started out. Otherwise I'm just taking the interlocutor's word for it, and I tend to ask them to back those up. You better believe that I've asked lawyers, doctors, and therapists I know to do the same, because even the mantle of expertise is nothing if you can't show someone where you got your information from.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Ah, but that's just it. An opinion is not very useful for a published work - unless it's to warn someone away, which can be done in less than ten words.

What I'm hoping happens with this experiment is that I throw up the review and people say something on the order of 'why?' - then I get to express the opinion side, which is nifty because I *have* to justify at the same time.

But until that why comes up - a review is a review. And you keepa youself outta it.

[magaliiiii.livejournal.com]

I think the point being made is, the way the intro to the post was written it sounded like you were writing a review IN THIS POST, thus the lack of a title was rather bizarre... however if as I understand you were just talking about the process of reviewing in general, you might want to clarify that since what you wrote at the beginning of the post implies you are talking about a specific book.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Um. This disclaimer ran too long and I thought better of it?

And I've got a few books to get through...and wouldn't you know, work got crazy this morning. Bear with me!

[magaliiiii.livejournal.com]

Oh I'm only trying to explain the comments above, asking for a title.

[turandot.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but no. That's a quintessential non-answer to the concern raised. You are obviously expressing a view that there is a difference between a review and an opinion. Notwithstanding whether your opinion is indeed justified or not, that view had to originate somewhere.

Indeed you made a vague appeal to authority by mentioning a book at the top of your entry that a reader would presume you have read to arrive at the view you espouse. When presented with the question: "Well, what is the book in question?" not providing a concrete answer, but rather deflecting it with "I'm not going to do the research for you" actually detracts from your entire argument, be it opinion based or otherwise.

Unless you can show your reader where the basis for your argument lies, don't be surprised if they decide that it has no merit whatsoever. After all "A review is a review" is a tautology, and tautologies don't make for good arguments.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping to hit that golden mean - which is to give you just enough information to identify the work. Seriously, there are days that I'm sure that the simple fact a review is written is supposed to imply complicit approval of the same.

Until the comments start rolling in, of course.