Nom de Plume

In all my webbish peregrinations around the many lit blogs out there, I’ve noticed that precious few lit bloggers post their own opinions about the books they talk about.

No seriously, this puzzles me.

There are links to essays, excerpts from author interviews, and discussions about other reviews. In short, many lit blogs seem to contain links to reading materials to what someone else has written about a book.

It’s frustrating; I want to read honest reviews of the books other bloggers have read. I don’t really care about reading the hooplah surrounding the NY Books section (which I despise anyway). I can find out the Booker shortlist by myself. As for author interviews, sure that can be fun, but I go to other sources for those if and when I’m interested.

And don’t get me wrong–there’s a lot of great information out there. There are writers who do post their own reviews. Some of them have a publishing slant, which can be helpful. Others list author readings by location, or even have a guest blogger who’s a published author. That’s great.

But it seems like a complete and total copout to post an excerpt of the L.A. Times Book Review’s opinion of Rushdie’s latest, and then say that this review is what’s made you decide to read it. I mean, WTF? I don’t really care WHY you read a book. I just want to know what you thought of it. I would love to find someone else out there who hated, say, The Known World. Or even someone who loved it, and see why. And then maybe even get into a little comment war about how much his or her taste sucks.

But, perhaps, when it comes right down to it, that’s the issue.