There is quite a bit of talk at Shocklines today about reviewers that only give glowing reviews. It’s a good point and it was suggested that only doing positive reviews invalidates a reviewer. That he or she isn’t serving the critical process duly.Yes, I’m guilty of it and I emulated the best. Back when I [...]

There is quite a bit of talk at Shocklines today about reviewers that only give glowing reviews. It’s a good point and it was suggested that only doing positive reviews invalidates a reviewer. That he or she isn’t serving the critical process duly.

Yes, I’m guilty of it and I emulated the best. Back when I pored over every page of The Twilight Zone Magazine, I used to despise the reviews of Thomas M. Disch. I thought he was a repugnant, smarmy, detestable asshole who delighted in putting a book or author down. It seemed more like cruelty than criticism to me and I’ve never been able to read a word of Disch’s own writing because of it.

Disch thankfully left the magazine and when Edward Bryant took over the book review pages, for me it was like a breath of fresh air. Bryant seemed to wish to point the interested reader toward the good stuff, and there was plenty of it to go around. I never detected a hateful sentiment in his valuable reviews. He seemed to go against the critical process and I loved him for it.

Rest assured, I don’t consider myself to have a fraction of the talent that Bryant has. I only love his style and it has been an inspiration to me.

I’ve been accused of being full of shit, but I don’t give a damn. That’s fine and I probably am. But I do not wish to be accused of being a critic, which I most certainly am not. Nor would I wish to be one.

I know I’m not the best reviewer out there and I think I’ve abandoned more half-completed reviews than ones I’ve uploaded. Some, or more precisely, a lot of them just come across like shit to even me, so I can’t imagine that anyone else would want to read them.

This is a big part of why I started this place up. I love books and movies and I like to talk about them. But I don’t like deadlines or anything like that. I like being my own boss here and if I feel like getting a review or anything up, I do it. If I don’t, I don’t.

One thing I give you my absolute word about: I do not give a blanket good review to everything that passes my way. If I praise something, it’s from the heart. Everyone might not agree and I might not put it in the most eloquent terms, but it’s genuine.

Quite a few people have had some very kind things to say to me about the site and its content. For that I am humbly grateful. I do this out of pocket to share the things I love. I hope that a few will read or watch something that moved me and that they will feel the same things. Maybe help sell a few books or movies. That’s it.

No comments

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA