![](\"images\/books-lots-725.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Tobias Buckell writes about a book blogger who struggles with how to keep his reviews original<\/a> after reading huge volumes of books. I write reviews for The New Podler Review of Books<\/a>, so Buckell’s piece hit home for me.<\/p>\n 1) When you get to a point where you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read an amazing number of books, you change. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read so much that what may seem new or interesting to most (and even to the writer of the book you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reading) is just a variation to you. Your expectations regarding the work change.<\/p>\n …<\/p>\n 2) If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re able to either unconsciously or consciously navigate the above, what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re left with isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a raw, initial passion for reviewing what you love, but a more craftman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s-like examination of the book for an audience you may no longer really be a part of, but can remember being a part of. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to slip into this vein, by will or luck, because it does allow you to keep reading a ton while reporting back on the basics of what you read.<\/p>\n What those reviews are basically covering is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you like X sort of thing, this hits X okay, with some additional Y and Z, if you also are into that.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Do they feel sucked dry of a bit of the reviewer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s authorial voice? Yeah, probably, because the reviewer has had to step back out of necessity in order to report back to a larger audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I see lots of queries at New Podler for well-written books. But lately I find myself passing over queries that I may have once grabbed simply because they sound like books I’ve already read. And when I do take a book, I feel like my reviews are “craftman’s-like” as Buckell described.<\/p>\n I still love discovering new authors and reviewing books. But how do I learn to see the unique wonder in each book I review, rather than its similarities to other books I’ve read? Buckell touches on the answer:<\/p>\n At a workshop not too many years ago a newer writer began to condemn a best selling novel, pointing out all its flaws and jagged edges. I listened for a long time, nodding.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153All those things are true,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I said. […] \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But until you learn what the good parts were that excited the reader, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re always going to be bitterly upset about what is wrong with that bestseller. Learn to spot what worked in that book, and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be able to move forward. And you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be a lot less upset all the time as well.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Good advice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tobias Buckell writes about a book blogger who struggles with how to keep his reviews original after reading huge volumes of books. I write reviews for The New Podler Review of Books, so Buckell’s piece hit home for me. 1) When you get to a point where you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve read an amazing number of books, you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,28,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-novels","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robsteinerauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robsteinerauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robsteinerauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robsteinerauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robsteinerauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robsteinerauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robsteinerauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robsteinerauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robsteinerauthor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}