The most important thing is to establish where the reviewer is coming from.
I thought the most important thing was the review itself! I mean, I don't care where a reviewer is coming from, whether they have had a grounding in English literature/particular genre or not. I read the review, and if the book sounds good, I read the book. Afterwords, if the review and the book match, I know if the reviewer can be trusted or not.
We expect the reviewers to know what they're reading, to know what they're saying, and to know how to communicate those things to us.
But that just requires judgement and an ability to communicate, that doesn't mean that the reviewer has to do the academic's job. A reviewer reviews, an academic researches. And if a book requires research before making sense, then it isn't a terribly good book anyway.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-08-13 02:32 pm (UTC)I thought the most important thing was the review itself! I mean, I don't care where a reviewer is coming from, whether they have had a grounding in English literature/particular genre or not. I read the review, and if the book sounds good, I read the book. Afterwords, if the review and the book match, I know if the reviewer can be trusted or not.
We expect the reviewers to know what they're reading, to know what they're saying, and to know how to communicate those things to us.
But that just requires judgement and an ability to communicate, that doesn't mean that the reviewer has to do the academic's job. A reviewer reviews, an academic researches. And if a book requires research before making sense, then it isn't a terribly good book anyway.