An An Intriguing, Compelling, and Poignant Reminder for Book Reviewers

Posted 26 March, 2008 in Book Reviewing |

Over at the Paper Cuts blog, Bob Harris has put together a list of seven words that book reviewers tend to overuse, mostly out of laziness. I am either very proud or very ashamed to admit that I’ve used all of them at one time or another, except perhaps for employing “muse” as a verb. I will point out, however, that when I referred to Nikolski as “intriguing,” I did indeed mean to connote a mysterious quality in that novel.

And I do take umbrage with Harris’s accusation that reviewers always use “lyrical” to mean “well written.” If I want to say that something is well written, I’m much more apt to use those two words. When I say a particular passage is “lyrical,” I mean something entirely different.*

My other complaint is that he failed to include the word “unputdownable,” which is one of the great linguistic abortions of our era.

P.S. I have also been know to use the word “eschew” in conversation. So bite me.

*Usually, I mean that it’s lyrical.

1 comment to “An An Intriguing, Compelling, and Poignant Reminder for Book Reviewers”

Panic, March 26th, 2008 at 4:11 pm:

• My front page only has “intriguing” once, and compelling not at all! WOOOOO! I often find myself at a loss when I’m trying to say “I liked it, it was interesting to me” for the 100th time. Because the thing is, I like FAR more books than I don’t, and my interests are hugely varied, so I’m not usually bored by books. There have only been a few that I’ve actively disliked in the past couple years. It almost seems futile to write a blog when I pretty much like everything I read.

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