The aftermath of '20 most annoying book reviewer cliches' and 'What's the purpose of a book review?'

April 29, 2:49 PMBook ExaminerMichelle Kerns

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As regular Book Examiner visitors know, I had a book review epiphany/epipha-tree last month. The scales fell from my astonished eyes and I realized that not only do a whole lot of book reviewers (myself included) use the same, meaningless clichés, we manage to write a lot of words with only occasional shades of real meaning peeking through.

I targeted the 20 worst offenders of reviewerspeak in The 20 most annoying book reviewer clichés and pledged to abstain forever. Then, I forged a brave new book review template for myself, designed to prevent me from writing useless pap in What is the purpose of a book review? And are book reviewers writing anything useful?

I'm set, I thought. Here we go, full-speed ahead into the land of non-clichéd, honest, and useful book reviews, right?

Yes -- and no. I hadn't realized one very important thing. To write cliché-free reviews? To make every sentence about a book ripple with meaning as opposed to lazing about in mindless twaddle? It's damn hard.

For those of us indoctrinated into the cult of reviewerspeak, learning to write without our crutch-clichés is like learning another language. It reminds me of when I was in Beginning French.  I'd know in my mind exactly what I wanted to say -- "I have three sisters and a cat" -- but when I opened my mouth, the words forsook me. I couldn't translate the thoughts in my mind into coherent words that could come out of my mouth.

It was only in the first few days after I'd gone cliché-free that I realized what a substitute for thought those knee-jerk words and phrases were. I would sit, tongue-tied, in front of the computer, with the dawning understanding that what I had been writing up until that point wasn't thoughtful at all. Now that the pet words were taken away, now that I couldn't gloss over a book I really didn't like much with the innocuous "intriguing" or "thought-provoking," now that I was forced to say something concrete, specific, and opinionated with every word, I finally understood what breaking free of reviewerspeak really means: unlearning my native, lazy review language and replacing it with actual thought.

I have to be constantly vigilant, though -- if my attention slips even a bit, the clichés attack. They cling to me like leeches and I have to burn them off like I'm in some frightful Vietnam War film. Is it worth the trouble, especially when it seems like everyone else at the New York Times Book Review and the Christian Science Monitor and every other rapidly vanishing newspaper is perfectly happy with their tour de forces and un-put-down-able, page-turner tomes? Yes.

 

The clichés were only one part of the equation, however: the other half was my quest to create a book review format that was really useful to readers. After I came up with my ideal template (take a look at it here) and wrote my first reviews conforming to it -- on Jodi Picoult's Handle With Care, as well as an audiobook review for Slumdog Millionaire -- I ran into the second problem. The book review template was great, yes; but it was loooong and took much more mental energy than the breezy little reviews of yesteryear.

Again, I was paralyzed. As the books stacked up I couldn't imagine myself spending untold hours dissecting each tome in the same manner. I mean, it's not like I work at this full time or even get paid much for my pains (insert hysterical laughter here). I ended up unable to write anything because I felt suffocated under the burden of my own high-minded expectations.

So, here's the compromise I've come to : out of the avalanche of books I read each week, I'll pick one book and one audiobook -- either the best or the absolute worst or the most controversial or just whichever one that takes my fancy -- to go under the knife in the grand pooh-ba review. The rest of the huddled tomes will be corraled into a sort of Review Roundup, a weekly post featuring five or six 150-ish word cliché-free reviews (think The New Yorker's Briefly Noted section at the back of the magazine). These obviously won't be as in-depth as the behemoth reviews, but I'll work hard to make sure you get a good enough idea of the book to know whether it's your type or not. And don't think 150 word reviews are easy to write; give it a whirl sometime, fitting in a summary of the book, comments on the writing style, and your opinion without using one cliche or stale, meaningless phrase. It could be part of the Mensa admission test.

But what about The Book Examiner's Outrageously Ambitious 40 Year Reading Plan? I hear some of you bleat. And what about Book Lush 101: Drink your way through English Literature? When are we going to move from the sexy, alcohol-drenched Canterbury Tales to the sexy, alcohol-drenched King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table?

Don't fret, we'll get to it all. We've got all the time -- and books -- in the world.

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