>I know it’s trendy to knock Michiko Kakutani, but, honestly, her column today about two new biographies of Leni Riefenstahl was just the laziest kind of reviewing. In a favorite Times technique, she spends most of her space restating the scoop on Riefenstahl she read in the books she was reviewing, in a tone that implied she already knew this stuff. She devotes one very brief paragraph to comparing a single difference between the two authors’ points of view. She makes no evaluative judgment of either book, let alone vis a vis each other. I have no idea what one book does differently from the other; I have no idea which one I would rather read. Why review a book if you’re not prepared to give an opinion? Why review two together on the same subject if you’re not going to compare them?
About Roger Sutton
>how often do you read the NYT? if you read it regularly you wouldn’t have been surprised by that review!
>All the time but not usually her. I’m interested in Riefenstahl so I took notice.
>In one of the first book reviews I ever wrote, I was asked to provide 2,000 words on two similarly themed books. Anxious to do a good job, I read the books slowly, underlining and making copious notes. I labored over a piece that evaluated the quality of the books and the similarities and differences between them. I quoted extensively. The editor gave it back and told me he wanted a creative essay that was 80% me and 20% about the books. So there’s another approach that some people favor.
>I like 80-20 with the odds in favor of the book. But that 80 includes the reviewer-in-the-book, if I might coin a phrase. Old Michiko just did a book report. It was the work of a grind–I bet she got all As, all the time, but had no friends.
>I am SO glad I was never taught how to do a book review or book report in my schooling! No wonder they are so much fun to write now…WHAT a way to kill a child’s interest in reading new things…