Disappearing book reviews vs the blogs

7 comments on “Disappearing book reviews vs the blogs”

1. patricia says:
   May 22nd, 2007 at 7:50 am

   Levin’s opinion, as well as the many other print folk who have voiced similar viewpoints, is simply mind-boggling. Let’s just comapre, for example, this blog with the Globe’s book section. Who covers a wider range of unique information regarding books, writers and publishing? Quite frankly, I think Levin could benefit from a little parasitic behaviour in his world.

2. George says:
   May 22nd, 2007 at 7:59 am

   I think his point is that the papers are covering stories in depth and we’re linking to them, which is true, but quite often we covers certain things in more depth, or even at all, that the papers don’t touch. I like to think of it as symbiotic rather than parasitic. They provide us with news we don’t care enough about to write up on our own and we send them traffic.

3. Steven W. Beattie says:
   May 22nd, 2007 at 8:22 am

   Can’t we all just get along?

4. patricia says:
   May 22nd, 2007 at 8:22 am

   “but quite often we covers certain things in more depth, or even at all, that the papers don’t touch.”

   Exactly. They are constrained by the limitations of space, whereas Bookninja is not. And so what happens in most print book sections is that they all write about the same mainstream topics.

   Granted there are book blogs out there that don’t provide much content (mine, for example, is just shameless light fare, because I don’t have the energy or the chops to maintain a true literary blog), but there are plenty of excellent book/literary blogs which provide content and humour and insight that you will never find in any print book section.

   And you’re right about the symbiotic relationship. Would be nice if these people could own up to that fact.

5. Nathan says:
   May 22nd, 2007 at 9:02 am

   I think it’s still mostly parasitic, in terms of book blogs at least. (Given the stories and ideas that have been swiped from sites like Torontoist, or the stories that have been broken by political blogs in the US, it’s a little more give-and-take elsewhere.)

   But it’s a good kind of parasitic, a furthering of the discussion. That’s how it should work, anyway. In reality, book blog discussions tend to get dichotomous fast and stay that way, with everyone picking their team, or else (which I think is worse) dissipate in a cloud of bland huzzahs.

   (It is also important to note that the same issue of the Globe contains a column by Christie Blatchford on how much she likes her dog.)

6. michel says:
   May 22nd, 2007 at 1:40 pm

   the montreal gazette has a tabloid pull-out review section.

7. Ryan C says:
   February 7th, 2009 at 10:07 am

   I’ve been buying the Saturday edition of G&M for years here in Saskatoon, and even earlier in my small SK hometown whenever I could lay my hands on it and I always bought it for the book review section. From the age of 15 to the present, 35, it was one of my weekend pleasures to go through it and pick up whatever looked interesting. But now they’ve crammed it into 3 two page spreads and a back page and half of it isn’t book reviews but book-related filler (do we really need articles about book clubs?).
   And where has all the fiction gone? Shouldn’t the reviews of fiction and non-fiction be just about equal?
   Apathy and cutbacks killed the book section. Apathy and cutbacks kill a lot of things.

Discuss