One of my favorite technology blogs, Make Use Of, shocked me this morning with a post about book review websites. I had to read the introductory paragraph twice to make sure that this post wasn’t a joke of some kind. The author claims that the reading of books is dying and cajoles us into making books a “part of our daily routine” and offers us a few sites to make choosing our books easier.
The author, Stefan Neagu, writes:

Books, once considered the the pinnacle of human civilization, have slowly gone into retreat. Whether it’s technology, modern society or time, the reason behind the demise is widely debated, but what we know for sure is that books today, are still a great way to experience adventure thrills, learn about faraway places and contemplate the future

These are the sort of unsubstantiated statements that drive a good librarian crazy. (Those who love comma splices will adore this post, by the way.) When I did a brief search for publishing stats I found that The Association of American Publishers reported we bought 24 billion dollars worth of books last year. Mr. Neagu is correct, that dollar amount is less than what was earned in 2007 but 24 billion is still a lot of money. As far as the “widely debated” reasons for this decline…can anyone say recession? I’m thinking that people are reading the books they bought last year when they were flush and didn’t have the time to read. And they are using their public libraries more. And I’m sure they are reading on the internet more but I will bet you my untouched first edition hardcover copy of Infinite Jest that they are not reading novels on the computer.

I also have to take issue with the sites that Make Use Of chose to review and the criteria used to evaluate them. The post is entitled “The 8 Best Book Review Sites” but only gives us four. (The other four are newspapers with book sections.) And they are clearly not the “best” because the evaluative comments include “nothing remarkable but worth a read,” “slightly better organized than the others,” and this train wreck of a paragraph describing AllReaders.com:

AllReaders.com, with a design stuck in 1999, the apogee of humanity according to the Matrix. Their library is comprehensive and the search engine highly customizable, but the reviews are generally short and superficial. “Gordon invites readers, authors and publishers to enter books and reviews in a process that takes about 10 minutes,” and that’s exactly the problem with the site. Instead of knowledgeable readers and writers, you will sometimes risk finding a common illiterate species: the internet troll. The advantage of reading through many viewpoints is undeniable so go on and visit it here.

Apogee of what according to whom?

Geez, I thought this post was supposed to review the eight BEST sites not the NY Times and three mediocre ones found in the first results page in a google search for book reviews. I’m sorry to be so critical of a single blog post out of so many good ones from Make Use Of but I have come to expect better. I won’t comment on the writing. I just won’t.

I rely on Publisher’s Weekly, New York Times, The New York Review of Books and Amazon to get recommendations on what I should read next.

Make Use Of, you make, me crabby.