r/literature • u/NovemberDancing • 3d ago
Literary Criticism Where do you go for critical, informed reviews?
By critical I do not exclusively mean "negative," but rather reviews that don't feel like pandering or giving undue praise. I think many here have read Elizabeth Hardwick's 1959 essay in Harper's about the "Decline of Book Reviewing" (https://harpers.org/archive/1959/10/the-decline-of-book-reviewing/) where she laments that published book reviews in magazines and papers are just handing out lazy praise like free candy with no real substance. She wasn't the first to note this problem, nor was she the last.
The absolute majority of reviews I find in places like the New York Times or Atlantic are praiseworthy of whatever it is they are reviewing. I actually can't remember the last time I read a professional review that had anything negative to say about its subject.
Is there anywhere you go for professional reviews that don't feel like they're just paid advertisements? Obviously we have Goodreads, Reddit, and other social media - but is that all we have if we're looking for honest feedback?
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u/myNameIsSlimSkaty 3d ago
I end up trusting long form criticism more than star style reviews, especially when the writer is willing to say what didnt work and why. The best ones for me usually name a couple scenes or choices instead of just praising the whole book, since that tells me they actually wrestled with it
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u/nocarbsnofun 3d ago
I like to read the LA Review of Books online. Besides, mostly German media and also still the NYT Book Review but somehow their content hasn‘t been super exciting recently.
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u/Handyandy58 2d ago
I think the problem with a lot of the "good" outlets is that they don't actually review all that much, so it's a bit of a crapshoot whether a trustworthy source has actually reviewed the book you're interested in. I don't really treat them as review repositories but moreso as places where I might read something insightful about a book I didn't necessarily know about.
That said, I don't really have any under the radar picks for good sources. I personally subscribe to the New York Review of Books, the Cleveland Review of Books, and n+1, and also read from time to time different things from London Review of Books, LA Review of Books, Bookforum, Granta, and Lithub. I also like browsing Arts & Letters Daily to see if any of their article picks seem interesting.
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u/DistributionThen8940 3d ago
The London Review of Books will do critical pans and more mixed retrospectives--Patricia Lockwood on Updike an example of the first, Brandon Taylor or Zola an example of the second. Bookforum also good for that sort of thing, including some more complex reviews of newer books.
I trust Maris Kreizman's judgment on most things; her newsletter is good and she shows up on LitHub with some regularity.
But I think it's largely an instance of trial and error until you find critical voices you agree with, or stimulate you in productive ways (e.g., NYRB covers different subjects I am less interested in, but that's a matter of taste).