For Book Reviewers

     
     I would imagine that the audience for this post will be minuscule given that book reviews, particularly in newspapers, have largely disappeared from print publications. Should you get the call, however, you will find below some material you may use (I did). It will be especially useful if you need filler for a long review and if you want to entice the reader with some good prose, before you offer some of your own.

    Among the debris I am discarding I found material relating to a book review I produced. I will spare you and not recycle the entire review which was of a festschrift for a retired librarian. It seems to me that the introduction to the review is worth sharing, however, especially the portion by Macauley:

“After reviewing the three-volume life of Lord Burleigh, Macauley wrote the following:

“Compared with the labour of reading through these volumes, all other labour, the labour of thieves on the treadmill, of children in factories, of negroes in sugar plantations, is an agreeable recreation. There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys. He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him. He changed his mind and went to the oar.”

This is how the review begins: 
      "There are those, I am sure, who would expect that it would be wiser to choose the oar straight away than to agree to review a book on reference services and library education. They would be wrong in this instance, however, for the book under consideration contains some interesting and informative essays.”

Sources:
     The review actually exists and can be found here: "Reviewed Work: Reference Services and Library Education: Essays in Honor of Frances Neel Cheney by Edwin S. Gleaves, J. M. Tucker. Review by: Jerry Mulcahy, Canadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation
Vol. 9, No. 1 (Winter, 1984), pp. 108-111.
     It should be noted that Ms Cheney was quite a reviewer. She produced almost 6,000 of them for the Wilson Library Bulletin, while also reviewing for the Nashville Banner, and over 2,000 more can be found in Reference Services Review.
    The person in the picture above also actually exists. He is Ron Charles who reviewed books for the Washington Post and you can learn more about him and the decline of book reviewing here:
"For Your Consideration: Ron Charles, Video Book Reviewer," Dan Ozzi, Publishers Weekly, Feb, 14, 2011.