Book Review Quotes

• It may sound a bit like an army barracks, but the truth of the matter is: there must be some time laid aside for arranging, time for working on either a book or an article - I've written two articles in the last four months for the New York Times book review section.

  Mel Torme

  New York, Truth, Book

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• If nobody talks about books, if they are not discussed or somehow contended with, literature ceases to be a conversation, ceases to be dynamic. Most of all, it ceases to be intimate. It degenerates into a monologue or a mutter. An unreviewed book is a struck bell that gives no resonance. Without reviews, literature would be oddly mute in spite of all those words on all those pages of all those books. Reviewing makes of reading a participant sport, not a spectator sport.

  Patricia Hampl

  Sports, Book, Reading

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• The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.

  Walter Kaufmann

  Believe, Book, Character

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• Most books reviews aren't very well-written. They tend to be more about the reviewer than the book.

  Tibor Fischer

  Book, Reviews, Wells

  "Better than Amis?" by Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. August 31, 2003.

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• I started to write book reviews as a means of recording my thoughts about what I'd read before all memory of them vanished.

  Debra Hamel

  Memories, Book, Writing

  Source: keeperofthesnails.blogspot.com

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• A book reviewer is usually a barker before the door of a publisher's circus.

  Austin O'Malley

  Book, Doors, Circus

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• If I like a book, I tend to read the author's entire collection. But I choose mainly through personal recommendations, general word of mouth and book reviews.

  Randa Abdel-Fattah

  Book, Mouths, Recommendations

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• I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Book, Looks, Disease

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• I mean, when you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life.

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Mean, Tired

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• You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one.

  John Irving

  Book, Simple, House

  "Wrestling Life Into Fable". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 3, 2005.

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• I'm never a fan of the sociopathic kind of reviewing, people who are sort of self-immolating and have social problems or whatever, and let it out in literary-criticism form. I just feel like book reviewing should be respectful and calm and not filled with bile.

  Dave Eggers

  Book, Self, People

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 23, 2005.

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• The individual attributes of warmth and competence are often perceived to be negatively correlated. That doesn't mean they actually are, but that's how people perceive the world. So, cruel people, those who gave negative book reviews, for instance, were seen as less likeable but as more intelligent.

  Jeffrey Pfeffer

  Book, Mean, Intelligent

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• Book reviewers are little old ladies of both sexes.

  John O'Hara

  Sex, Book, Writing

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• I would be wonderful with a 100-year moratorium on literature talk, if you shut down all literature departments, close the book reviews, ban the critics. The readers should be alone with the books, and if anyone dared to say anything about them, they would be shot or imprisoned right on the spot. Yes, shot. A 100-year moratorium on insufferable literary talk. You should let people fight with the books on their own and rediscover what they are and what they are not. Anything other than this talk.

  Philip Roth

  Book, Fighting, Years

  "'It No Longer Feels a Great Injustice That I Have to Die'". Interview with Martin Krasnik, www.theguardian.com. December 14, 2005.

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• The authors of book reviews would consider themselves dishonored were they to mention, as they should, the subject of the book.

  Louis Aragon

  Book, Should, Reviews

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• So, you see, it's a real chore for me to write a book review because it's like a contest. It's like I'm writing that book review for every bad book reviewer I've ever known and it's a way of saying [thrusts a middle finger into the air] this is how you ought to do it. I like to rub their noses in it.

  John Irving

  Real, Book, Writing

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• We set up a beta site, a test site, with movie, music and book reviews. If you're reading them and you want to buy a book or a ticket for a movie that's reviewed on the site, you can do that without leaving our site.

  Jay Chiat

  Book, Reading, Leaving

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• I’m interested in so many different things and I’d like to cover a lot of territory. I’m trying to see my show as the Sunday Times. You have the Arts & Leisure section, you have the Op-Ed page, you have the Book Review...even the Style section has those wonderful essays about relationships.

  Joy Behar

  Art, Book, Sunday

  "Joy Behar Discusses HLN Show: Wants Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Sees Show As Sunday Times". Interview with Danny Shea, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 13, 2009.

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• The whole family is a bunch of dangerous freaks...Most are ex-cons or junkies or deranged from inbreeding. Five have died violently, three are back in prison, two have gone insane from untreated venereal disease, and one writes book reviews.

  Tim Dorsey

  Book, Writing, Two

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• Book reviews have never helped me. Most of them erred in their interpretations and their work has been a waste of time.

  Manuel Puig

  Book, Literature, Waste

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• My generation was not only maligned in book reviews and attacked in graduate school but we lived to see our adored and adorable daughters wonder why feminism had become a dirty word.

  Erica Jong

  Daughter, Mother, Dirty

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• I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book—third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time.

  Robin Sloan

  Reading, Book, Wine

  Robin Sloan (2012). “Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore”, p.7, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• A mom reads you like a book, and wherever she goes, people read you like a glowing book review.

  Robert Breault

  Family, Mom, Mother

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• Most people don't have the money to spend on advertising to create awareness among readers, nor do they have the contacts at newspapers or magazines to get their books reviewed.

  Sara Paretsky

  Book, People, Magazines

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• Note that the #1 Top Reviewer at Amazon (4550 book reviews) is Harriet Klausner, formerly an acquisitions librarian in Pennsylvania. This just goes to show that librarians were destined to rule the Web.

  Peter Morville

  Book, Pennsylvania, Amazon

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