Episode 24: Reviewing Books

In this episode of the Watchung Booksellers Podcast, book critics Kate Tuttle and Mark Rotella discuss the process and importance of reviewing books.

Kate Tuttle is a book critic, essayist, and editor. A past president of the National Book Critics Circle and judge for the National Book Award, she edits the books pages of the Boston Globe. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. A Kansas native, she now lives in New Jersey after stints in Boston and Atlanta.

Mark Rotella is the Director of the Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America and teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Montclair State University. In addition, he serves as thesis advisor in the MFA Program at Columbia University.

Formerly, Rotella was the Senior Editor at Publishers Weekly and Board Member at National Books Critics Circle. He is the author of several books, including Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria and Amore: The Story of Italian American Song. He has been featured in The New York Times, NYT Book Review, The L.A. Times, Washington Post, and more, and has appeared on outlets including National Public Radio, Entertainment Tonight, and ABC News.

Resources:
What the Ocean Holds (The New York Review)
National Book Critics Circle
Publishers Weekly
The Boston Globe
Kirkus Reviews
Library Journal
TLS
NY Times
New York Review of Books
LA Times
Washington Post
Wall Street Journal
Vanity Fair
Brooklyn Book Festiv

Books:
A full list of the books and authors mentioned in this episode is available here.

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The Watchung Booksellers Podcast is produced by Kathryn Counsell and Marni Jessup and is recorded at Silver Stream Studio in Montclair, NJ.

The show is edited by Kathryn Counsell and Bree Testa. Special thanks to Timmy Kellenyi and Derek Mattheiss.

Original music is composed and performed by Violet Mujica.

Art & design and social media by Evelyn Moulton. Research and show notes by Caroline Shurtleff.

Thanks to all the staff at Watchung Booksellers and The Kids’ Room!

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Transcript

marni: Hi! Welcome Watchung Booksellers Podcast, where we bring you conversations from our bookstore's rich community of book professionals who talk about the different aspects of the book world. And if you're new to our podcast, thanks for joining us. 

We are recording this today in the office of the Kids Room, so if you hear any background noise, that's just some of our young customers having fun. 

marni: I'm Marni. I'm here with my co producer, Kathryn. Hi, Kathryn.

marni: How are you? Hey, I'm good. Hey everybody. What are you reading? 

kathryn: I am very excited that, uh, there's a new Oliver Berkman book that just came out today. Um, so I just got my hands on it and it is called Meditations for Mortals, Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts. , Oliver Berkman writes for The Guardian, and he was the author of 4, 000 Weeks, which I thought was just excellent,, 

kathryn: it's not so much how to do things, but, it's more reflective. And so 

marni: I'm 

kathryn: excited to read this new one. 

marni: How about you? What are you reading? Sounds great. I'm actually taking a break from books, dare I say that, um, to get caught up on, reading book reviews, which is something that we do a lot as booksellers.

marni: Um, and so I have my copy of,, the New York Review of Books, October 17th issue. And there's a great article, it's called, , What the Ocean Holds by Verlin Klinkenborg. And it's a review of two different, nonfiction books about the ocean. Um, and it's really fascinating. And I sort of love anything that has to do with the ocean.

marni: So, uh, one is The Blue Machine, How the Ocean Works, , by Helen zersky, and the other book they were reviewing is The Underworld Journeys to the Depth of the Ocean by Susan Casey. So if you're interested in book reviews, check out, , the October 17th edition of the New York Review of Books.

kathryn: Oh, that's very cool. I, um, yeah, I think a good book review is as good as reading, any non fiction.

kathryn: So, that brings us to today's topic. We are, in fact, talking about reviews. And any writer or publisher or reader can tell you that they are very essential, , to actually picking up a book and taking it home. So whether it's, uh, you know, blurbs, or in a periodical, or shelf talkers, or book tags in the bookstore, people really, really count on reviews. 

marni: Yeah. So with us today are two people who happen to know a lot about the reviewing process and are great supporters of authors and watching booksellers, 

kathryn: Mark Rotella, is the director of the Joseph and Elda Coia Institute for the Italian experience in America. And he teaches the in the Creative Writing program at Montclair State University.

kathryn: In addition, he serves as thesis advisor in the MFA program at Columbia University. Formerly he was the senior editor at Publishers Weekly, where he worked for nearly 20 years. He was a board member at National Books Critic Circle from 2015 to 2018. He's also the author of several books, including Stolen Figs and Other Adventures in Calabria , and Amore, the story of Italian American song.

kathryn: He has been published in the New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, the LA Times, Washington Post, among others.

kathryn: He's also appeared on outlets including National Public Radio, Entertainment Tonight, and ABC 

marni: News. And Kate Tuttle is a book critic, essayist, and editor, a past president of the National Book Critics Circle and judge for the National Book Award. She edits the book pages of the Boston Globe.

marni: Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. A Kansas native, she now lives in New Jersey after stints in Boston and Atlanta. 

kathryn: Enjoy the conversation and we'll be back afterwards to fill you in on what's coming up in the store.

It is really good to see you too. I feel I don't see you enough if we just live half a mile away. I know, that's how it is. Um, well I was gonna say, um, you convinced me to move here. To Montclair. I'm so glad, I remember talking to you about it. Yeah? When you guys moved here.

Uh, from, uh, Atlanta. Exactly. And so you convinced me because we were moving up to the New York area and we were on the National Book Critics Circle board together. That's right. Which was such a cool way to meet other book reviewers. Yeah. Like, you were working at Publishers Weekly at the time, right? Yes, exactly.

And that was awesome. I had been a long time member of the National Book Critics Circle for years, but that was when you were president. That was the, the first time that I actually became a judge. So, um, you know, one of the, you know, the judges of the many panels that we are on. Uh, so that was the first time.

And it was great to be able to talk about books in a critical yet fun way and to bring in our own expertise about it and to have good debates, sometimes not so good debates, often heated debates, but it was just a really , , great way to be with people.

Yeah, I really loved it. And I, you know, reviewing books, , all by myself, often in Atlanta, where I felt sort of cut off from the New York publishing scene. Um, uh, it was really nice to go to those meetings and talk to other people who review books, who lived all over the country too. , and who do this strange thing that we do. Mark, how did you get started reviewing books? Okay, it's a bit of a long answer. It was totally, um, accidental.

I was a Russian literature major in college. Um, I had applied to, uh, a bunch of grad schools to continue, uh, my PhD, to study Russian literature. But wait, weren't you also a ballet dancer? Yes, I was also a ballet dancer. Which is what, uh, well, I was at the University of Florida for, uh, a year and then I, Decided I didn't want to be in Florida anymore, which is where I grew up.

Um, you know, actually Atlanta and St. Petersburg, Florida. And I wanted to leave. I was really, when I was in high school, I read It was basically ballet that got me to read the Russian writers. And I was working at a surf shop, uh, on the beach. And, uh, at the end of our strip mall was this Russian couple who had just the greatest sandwich shop.

And I would go in there, they learned that I was interested in Russian literature or at least Russian ballet. And they said, Oh, you should read some of the greats. So the wife turned me on to Chekhov, short stories Nabokov's first novel, Mashinka or Mary, and it was then, um, that I decided to go to college, uh, to Columbia after, uh, going to University of Florida.

I dropped out for about two or three years to dance in New York . , uh I chose Columbia because one of my best friends from high school, there were only four or five people who went to the North or out of Florida for college. And he convinced me I should apply there. And it was really, the other books I was reading were Jack Kerouac and the Entire Beats.

And this was kind of tapped into my desire to leave, what I felt was kind of a claustrophobic sports, uh, dominated environment. But anyway, I graduated, realized after I had applied to three or four grad schools that I did not want to go into academia at that time for Russian.

I wanted to write, so I wrote. I ended up working, uh, as an employment counselor for recently, , emigrated Russians for political exiles. I gave them , job training classes. And then, um, I started driving a truck, in the city. It was a lighting truck to shoot videos and movies and TV.

So I was driving a lighting truck and I was best boy, key grip, doing that in addition. And one of my friends who was working at, uh, um, The new press needed a copy editor, or a proofreader, and they knew that I was an avid reader, um, and she took me on, and I proofread three or four books.

Then my friend at, uh, Publishers Weekly said, Hey, we're looking for a full time copy editor. You want to come aboard? And I did, and that's when I started getting into book review. It was totally on accident. Um, so I was freelance copy editor there, then I got My first job there as a copy editor, then as a reviews editor and working my way up to senior reviews editors 20 years later.

So anyway, so that was my, it was really circuitous and just like my life. It just was totally accidental. I didn't even know these jobs existed when I was a kid. Well, don't you think, I mean, I, I, I love that story so much because It's a really Gen X story. And I feel like we're sort of maybe the last generation who had that time and space and relative freedom to kind of, you know, have a misspent youth a little bit.

And it wasn't misspent because I also think that good critics have lived a life outside of school. Whether that's, you know, working or, you know, just other jobs, other experiences, living other places, meeting other kinds of people. Because I think that people, uh, young critics, people who maybe grew up reading the TLS and the New Yorker and went to good schools and then went to good grad schools and then got good internships.

I mean, they may be incredibly bright and smart, but they're not bringing a lot, perhaps, of, um, other experiences into their brain when they encounter a new book. And I think that that's part of what makes reading fun, is bringing your own brain into it. I, I think you're right on. And I think, um, this is what I felt with so many of us, uh, at the National Book Critics Circle, as I got to know them, is that we all had different backgrounds from newspaper, you know, and, and we were, You know, I, we had some, you know, a wide range of ages there.

Yep. Um, so with different, with different backgrounds, but you're absolutely right. I, I also think that's what makes, is experience, life experience is what makes, equally makes a writer a deeper writer. But to be a critic, I think you really have to have life experiences to bring in to any given work, to anything that we, we look at to, um, to kind of contextualize it.

Right. That's right. And I think, you know, so I, I guess, uh, if I, if it doesn't sound presumptuous, I'll share my story too. So I, maybe had a slightly more direct path than yours, although not much more direct. Um, but I did grow up in a family of big readers. So we, we always got the New Yorker. Um, my parents were big readers.

My father is now retired, but was an American history professor for years and has written some of his own books. Um, Just, you know, history books. I grew up as a, I was a massive insane reader as a child. Um, I used to read children's books over, uh, into a big audio, reel to reel audio tape recorder for blind children, which was this volunteer gig my mother got me into.

Um, And even when I was in college, I worked as my dad's research assistant for a few semesters where he was working on a book and he had a huge list of books that he didn't have time to read unless he knew they were going to help his research. So he would send me a list of like 10 books and say, Can you read these ten books and in two weeks give me like a half page typed up report on each of the ten books and let me know if you think that I need to read them for my research.

Tell me what's interesting in them, what I can ignore, whether you think they're full of it. And, you know, I was an undergrad, but he trusted me and I think that gave me a lot of confidence in my, um, to um, to read and to write about books. And then I, like you, thought about grad school. I was an English major at the University of Kansas, which is where I grew up and where my dad taught.

I, uh, I moved to Boston to work as an intern at Houghton Mifflin, uh, editing college textbooks, which was kind of like, I mean, I hated it so much. I was working on accounting textbooks, which, you know, accounting, maybe shouldn't even be a college core, you know, discipline. It's like, it's carpentry. It's a trade, uh, and not a trade.

I understand to this day, but I couldn't get into the trade division working on like real books, you know, real fiction and nonfiction. So I read a lot. Uh, I, I tried to go, I thought about going to grad school. I didn't go to grad school. I quit. The publishing job spent a lot of my mid twenties, um, just reading too much waiting tables, which I had done all during high school and college and, uh, and getting high to be honest.

So, uh, but I also saw a lot of movies. Like I feel like I was, I was absorbing so, so much. Um, and, uh, And then after I had my first child and kind of had to get real about getting a job, I started taking these, uh, part time jobs at Harvard for the health insurance. But I was running up against really interesting people, meeting interesting people, and, um, one of the people I met was, uh, a little local book review journal called the Boston Book Review that doesn't exist anymore.

Um, but he asked if I might try to review a book. Um, and I said, sure. And, uh, I started reviewing for them. And in a couple of years I had my own book. Two page spread every month in the, in the journal and I was writing short reviews, which I became really fond of. Um, and a few years after that, after some other jobs, I got jobs in editing some things at Harvard and whatnot, but I, uh, then a good friend of mine became the, uh, book review editor at the Boston Globe and hired me to write a column of brief reviews.

And then a column of author interviews. And I still do, uh, the author interview column. I've been doing that column for, uh, 16 years. Every week, interview an author. And, uh, and then for the past four years, I've been editing the books section at the Globe. With a small detour where I edited the books section.

I did books coverage for People Magazine, which was a very misbegotten and strange detour. But you know, as I was saying about your career, like, every strange detour you learn something from. So. You know, you and I have known each other for a long time, uh, and it wasn't until just now that I realized you didn't start reviewing books until after you had your first child.

I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that. Um, so we were just talking about life experiences and so you had , already a life before that, really a decade, uh, before you started doing that, even though you were still reading books. Yeah. Uh, and I know you and I are about the same age and we were both kind of into the alternative music scene.

Yes. Um, uh, and so we also had that kind of like, almost. Existing in ways on the fringe, or at least artistically, musically, and were your choice of books at the time, what were you reading? Do you recall what it was? You said you spent a lot of time reading. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, so I I was really, really lucky to grow up in a college town and have friends who were college students when I was a high school student.

So I was in a kind of art punk scene from the time I was 15, uh, and, and so that led me to a lot of books actually, you know, so even before I was an adult, I mean, I just was reading, you know, like you, the beats, um, but also, um, You know, some really, uh, sad, gothic poetry and, um, but also sort of through my father a lot of, like, uh, literary journalism, um, and I was very interested in, uh, long form journalism about how the world works.

Right. But then through the punk scene and the art scene, I mean, I I like, I was really into, um, do you know the, uh, the author Cornell Woolrich? I know the author, I've never read. Oh, they're so fun. So they're like, you know, little sort of, Noir ish, but kind of weirder than that and um, and he wrote so much He published under a lot of pseudonyms too, but they're really great great fun books But then through that I got into Raymond Chandler.

Oh, and I also before I started reviewing books I had this older friend who was, who is very well read. And so through him, I was reading, Nabokov through him. Um, and, uh, and then I got into like mid century American, like, uh, I did a whole Sinclair Lewis thing and I did a whole, anyway, you know, all of that.

And then, and then earlier, you know, Wharton, James, Melville, Hawthorne. So I feel like I was pretty well educated. Both in school and out of school and definitely that kind of alternative punky curriculum Had me reading other kinds of books and and viewing other kinds of art and movies too, which all plays in Yeah, And then you started reviewing books for first this literary magazine But then you started interviewing authors When you first started reviewing books, was it fiction, non fiction, poetry?

And, and, did you even have a say? We just say, do you want to do this? And most people say yes, because they want the work. But when you were reviewing, were there books that you either were, um, typecast for, or books that you were drawn to review?

Or just books, any books, just to get the experience? Yeah, I mean I was definitely really voracious, and I'm still pretty wide ranging as a generalist. But I, um I've always loved nonfiction. Uh, the first book I reviewed was nonfiction. It was a very poorly written, um, yet still somehow fascinating memoir by the filmmaker Nicholas Ray.

He directed In a Lonely Place with Gloria Graham and Humphrey Bogart. You know, famous weird noir director who got weirder and weirder. Wrote a kind of terrible memoir called I Was Interrupted. Um, And I still remember my editor taking me out to lunch and saying, So, you've written your first review and it's a highly negative review.

And he said, This is fun, but we also have to tone it down. And I learned a lot. Um, I've been lucky in that I've gotten to choose a lot of what I review. I do also think, though, as a woman and as now, you know, sort of a middle aged white woman, a lot of people would think that I'm reviewing, like, upmarket women's fiction mostly.

And I'm really not. , I still gravitate toward nonfiction, yeah, so how about you? What were you, what were, do you remember your first book review? So, it was actually at Publishers Weekly, and, I always loved food, um, and as I was copy editing various sections, I was given, a cookbook, I believe, I don't think this is my first book to review, it might have been a Lydia Bastianich book that was coming out, and, uh, the, uh, the review editor there said, could you do this for me?

And, um, And I said, sure, I've never reviewed one. She goes, yeah, but you've, you've edited enough to know what goes into it. And, and I think, so that was, I don't know if that was the first, but that was the first big name that I remember. What I do remember is, uh, Sibyl Steinberg, who was who is, uh, the fiction review editor at Publishers Weekly, had been there for two, three decades.

She was just known throughout the book publishing world that a book landed on her desk. It would be her. Live or die with a publisher's weekly review and especially those, stars. Yeah. Once she learned that I was a Russian literature major who read my last year, all my classes were in Russian. All our papers were in Russian. Wait, can I ask a quick sidebar? How's your Russian now? Oh, it's, it's, it's almost non existent. It's just as drop it. So yeah, it is. But that was Because you were so fluent at that time that you could read and write a scholarly article or an academic article in Russian.

Yes, exactly. Uh, you know, if you were to put me in Russia right now, it would take me a couple of months. I'm sure it would come back to me. I'm pretty good at, you know, just. Being immersed in it coming back. Yeah, but I remember taking a translation writing workshop and I was Translating a little known Pushkin poem, which is the precursor of the bronze horseman But it was really it was really, you know, really challenging, but now I speak because of my work right now Italian So that is kind of like I have a hard time speaking any other language If I do the Italian comes in but yeah, yeah Sibyl Kind of pegged me as the person to read those big, dense works of translation from the French, from the German, from the Czech.

And I think because she knew I appreciated that mid century going into late 20th century complexity of novels, uh, and so I became, you know, The person, the go to person who would read an 800 page book in translation. Probably because I was the only sucker who would do it for what PW was paying. I cannot believe I didn't ask you to do the new Olga Tokarczuk book for us. But yeah, so that was, so it was for the first year or two. It was, um, Henry Mulish. It was, so many Polish, French, and German writers were the ones and some Czech that, that, and of course the Russians, some of the Russians, , that would come to me and it was really, uh, very difficult.

And I, it sounds difficult. And, you know, when you had talked about What the editor thought was maybe overly harsh. And so you had to balance and I want to talk a little bit about that. But first, so the kinds of reviews I was doing was a little bit different from yours cause mine is for the trade industry.

Right. And I still do now review for the New York times from, from time to time. So we should explain to people listening, right? You know, anybody out there. Um, so that the, the trade publications that come out, Several months before a book comes out are meant to alert bookstores, librarians, and other book review editors whether a book is sort of worth it.

Um, and so they, it's the first line of, of, of criticism that a book is going to face after it's published and it's mostly Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Library Journal. Library Journal. Um, but it's hugely important. It's a real winnowing because I, I don't know if the general readership is aware of how many thousands and thousands of books come out every week, um,

that winnows down to how many PW or Kirkus is going to review and how many they're going to give a star to and, uh, and then back to a newspaper like mine where we review three books a week basically. Right. Right. And then you could go into Much longer, uh, more nuanced, in depth pieces that are more essayistic than what we were doing.

How many words did they give you? 250. So to do something like that, and you're absolutely right, this was, um, you know, kind of like the, uh, bellwether for how a book might , perform. Also, film companies at the time were looking for, Oh, this might be a good thing to option before the book came out, before it got into the general public's hands.

Absolutely. Yeah. And so we had to, within 250 words, and this was the most challenging thing. And as I became an editor, where I had about 50 reviewers write for me, was the most challenging thing is to get, to convey not just the synopsis of the book, but the evaluative statement. What was it? And to do that in 250 words, to capture all of that with, and my thought, what I told others is, don't review this as the book you wish it were.

to review it on its own merit. Yeah. And did the author succeed or not in, in the original, what you believe to be the original conceit. And I found that a single negative sentence can go a long way. Yes. It, it just carries so much weight. Sometimes even more so than a, You know, super, you know, positive.

Yeah, well, it's human nature, right? Like, you can hear ten compliments, but you're only gonna remember that one. I still remember, like, I still remember when my books came out. I got, I was fortunate to get some very nice reviews. But it's the, the negative ones that just still, you know, stick in my craw. It's very hard.

I've learned, um, I've learned that understatement is important, and Um, , when a critic wants to say something negative, but it really depends, I think, on the stakes of not just the book publishing stakes, but also the stakes of like how serious you think the offense is, you know, like I, if a book is somewhat boring to me, but we still need to review it for some reason, or it's valuable in a lot of other ways.

You know, you can really just sort of hint at that with a sentence. It doesn't really matter. Um, with this Nicholas Ray book, which was just really overwritten and under edited, I realize now, I couldn't stop. I was just, I just wrote a, you know, it was my first book review. It was sort of a very, it was too long.

It was a little bit stream of consciousness. It was like this writing is just terrible and, and, uh, and, and, you know, thankfully, uh, my friend who worked there and my, my neighbor at the time, too, Took me to lunch in Cambridge and said, you know, here's how you do it. Yeah, he was great. And he was very, he was, he said, don't stop.

Don't like hide that critical eye. It's good that you are critical, but you have to learn how to convey that to the reader. Cause you're writing for the readership, right? That's who you're writing for. That's your audience. Um, and, and I think, I don't know if it was him or somebody else, or maybe I just picked this up over the years, but my, my number one thing.

that I think about when I'm writing a book review of my own, or when I'm reading a book review that a freelancer has sent to me for the Boston Globe, is that as a piece of writing, a review itself has to be a good piece of writing. It has to be interesting. It has to be readable. It has to be clear. Uh, it's not a book report.

Um, you know, and it's not a personal, it's not a vanity project. You're writing for an audience and your audience should get some pleasure from your review. Um, so. So, so to get back to that, so the, the idea of negative reviews in general, I think is, you know, I know it's something that the trades kind of have to do if somebody is a well known author, like you, you know, you can, you're not going to write a negative review of a debut novelist because who cares, let it die, you know, but if you have a big time author coming and their new book isn't as good as their previous books, um, you have to signal that somehow.

Right. Um, um, So, for instance, the new Sally Rooney book, um, our review is running today, um, and it will be in print on Sunday, and our reviewer didn't love it. And we worked on that review really hard to make sure that she, as a critic, felt comfortable with the way she expressed herself, because we know this is a really popular writer.

And her criticisms were really specific, and she wanted to make clear what they were and not try to, you know, But also say like maybe her previous fans are not going to love this. So it was interesting. It's always an interesting task. When that review comes to you,, how do you approach that first, that first draft of review?

Cause so we should let our, listeners know that, uh, even for the 250 word review for the longer review, but ours are anonymous reviews. Oh, right. And ours are not. Right. Exactly. Cause they're bylined in there and you often, you Reach out to well known writers, uh, uh, who have experience in this field, but our listeners should know that there's a lot of editing, a lot of reshaping that goes into this.

You know, as writers, like ourselves, we know what it's like to be edited and, and there's a lot of direction because what we submit is, You know, is, is our thoughts and, and it just needs to be shaped first for the style of the magazine or newspaper, but also to kind of balance a review, but also to, uh, maybe fact check it or maybe to rephrase it in order for certain points to come out.

So what is your experience when you first get a review in? I mean, I always read it once before editing it, obviously. And, um, I often read it aloud. I'm a big believer in reading aloud. Um, I just think you, there's no better way to catch, um, you know, any infelicities of prose or any, or, or stupid mistakes, or just get a sense of like, this is boring, this is too long.

I'm going to compress this paragraph. I'm going to move this paragraph or what's my lead. Um, that's a great kicker. Let's move it. Um, but then I, and I, but I do, while I'm reading it aloud, I'm thinking about what am I going to do to it? And, you know, often I get things, you know, a lot of freelancers file too long.

So I'm also always thinking, like, what can I cut? Um, our book reviews in the globe run around 900 words, which is, you know, Which to me seems huge. It's kind of big in the newspaper world, but it's very small compared to, you know, friends of mine who write for like, um, you know, the Times Literary Supplement in London, or, you know, or the New York Times Review, or the New York Review of Books, which runs longer review essays, um, But when somebody's negative, like we, there was a, there was a book a couple of years ago that was incredibly popular.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, which was, you know, retelling of, of David Copperfield set in Appalachia. Um, and Everybody loved it and I think it won the Pulitzer. It won something. Everybody loved it. My reviewer didn't like it. My reviewer thought. Kingsolver didn't necessarily have the experience to write that novel and that it was a little bit of like poverty porn.

Um, and that it looked, it seemed like she was slumming and the way she was writing about poor folks in Appalachia really didn't sit right with my reviewer. Um, who came from that background. Uh, and so we talked about it. On the phone, which is really rare. I mean, I, I don't really talk to my writers on the phone very much, but in this case, I was like, well, I think we should just talk it out.

I want to hear, um, and then, after that conversation, because I hadn't read the book, I don't review it. I don't have time to read the book of every book review I edit. Um, although I, I usually read some of it. Um, but it's, you know, it's three columns and three book reviews a week. So, let's say we're discussing eight or nine books.

I'm, I'm just not reading that. , I, I can't. Uh, but I decided to go with it. I said, you know, I think that this review feels fair. Um, and I think a fair criticism, It's a beautiful thing in this world, especially when so much journalism and especially kind of arts journalism can so easily slide toward just PR, you know, and I really like.

So I would never want to publish a review that's negative for the sake of showing off the critics chops. Yes, which I think happens, um, but I think it's okay to be negative when, when you feel it's justified. Yes. You know, and, and I think so, so we were just talking about negative reviews where you kind of have to massage and tease it out.

I know when sometimes if I get a negative review of a book that is going to do well from a high, I do have to take a little more time. And you're right, I would talk to the author, or we would have an exchange, you know, the writer of the, book review, the reviewer, and just an exchange.

Are you sure? Is this, is this really, and, and mostly I've had the same staff of reviewers for, a couple of decades. So I know their, sensibilities. They've read everything in this genre, so I know I can trust them. But I do have to be a little bit careful.

Just the same way if I get a review that is just overly glowing, which, as you said, could sound like a PR piece. Because it is so much easier to write just like a glowing book. Is it so much easier, I don't know, to write a glowing PR piece? It depends on your mood. Yeah, right, exactly. And then so you have to say, okay, , we may have to take this down a little bit because Right.

And Right. There are also, don't you find, I mean, there are some critics who just, uh, are very free with just throwing out a million adjectives and superlatives and others who you have to drag them, you have to say, look, I, just give me an adjective in the first graph so I know if they One adjective, one evaluative, one evaluative adjective.

Yes, to set the tone for the rest of the review. Some people you have to drag it out of them. That's right, yes, exactly. Yeah, it's very, uh, it's, it's interesting how, I mean, critics are really different and not, you know, and, uh, And that's why it's fun. I mean, it's part of what's fun about it, you know, right?

Do you, so do you still freelance? I do. So for a while, you know, I had done reviews for and articles for the LA Times, uh, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal. Um, I did a piece on, uh, George Plimpton, uh, and, and the release of his book. for Vanity Fair, but more recently I've done, uh, a couple, uh, I still do book reviews for the New York Times, uh, as well as opinion pieces for the Times, so.

You, uh, just to, for readers who don't know you, Mark, um, you, you left PW a few years back. And then also want anybody listening to this podcast to go to the times and see your, was it a tick talk that you did about the Italian gesture? It was for Tommy DeVito, the, uh, the third string quarterback, uh, from last year of the New York giants who just came out and he just, There's no other quarterback to go to.

He was a walk on, uh, from right around here, uh, two towns over. And his celebratory gesture was the Italian pinch finger, like, macchiafi. What do you want? What are you doing? That we see all over the place. And, uh, then, uh, New York Times, after I wrote this, uh, Op-ed about it. Uh, had me do a TikTok about it, which was so much fun and I felt sold to do it, but it ended up, you know, working with younger people to help me through it was really, was really great.

But, but, so you're leaning into your Italian ness in your new job, your new in your new job. You're a professional Italian. Yes, yeah, exactly. It's amazing. So, I'm at Montclair State University where I'm a professor of creative writing. I teach creative non fiction and some, like, intro to publishing classes, like, what is book publishing?

 But I also am the director of the Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America, where we, host events, uh, by authors, uh, musicians, um, really prominent Italians, but also debate. We talk about what is Columbus Day with, with, with Italian American scholars. Oh, I like that.

In this changing world. Yeah. Um. And so this is really to highlight um Italian immigration assimilation but using that as a looking glass to to create a Kind of look at other immigrant groups and more recent groups and how they are assimilating. Is it different? What is the lingua franca?

For many, it's food. It could be music that gets people together. So anyway, so that's what I'm doing there, but I still write and teach writing. Nice. So that's, yeah, that's it. I love that. Do you miss ever your job at Publishers Weekly? I miss, I've worked with a great, uh, a great group of people. I think really like minded maybe people who cared a lot about the written word, who cared about book publishing.

And I'd known them for so long and we worked in an industry that isn't necessarily a growing industry. Um, and, but, but we were all passionate about it and, and we, we take it serious. We take book publishing and literature or whatever we read. Whether it be mass market, the mass market editor, romance, science fiction, non fiction.

I was the senior non fiction, uh, review editor. Um, I like that camaraderie of being in an office, which I don't know if anyone can say anymore that they're rarely in an office, but I really like that, you know, I don't know about you, but the pace of journalism, the pace of a weekly magazine is, is, um, is, can be a tough pace to keep up.

Yeah. Uh, you know, we were talking about the number of books published. It was, we, there were five review editors at any given time there. And each of us did, you know, covered maybe between 15 and 18 books a week. And at that point, With that number, we only scratched the surface of the books being published.

And that was a lot. And those are the ones we either deemed essential or personal favorites. Like, you know what? I want this book to have a life outside. Or at least to try and give it a life. And I think we all kind of champion, I know you do too, champion books like that. Like, you know what? This is not going to get done.

And you can kind of tell the way, um, the news cycle is going that this might get lost. Right. And it's like, you know what? Let's give it a voice. And I think we try to do that. Yeah, that's my favorite part of the job, really. I mean, I think that, um, some of the books, uh, I, I, you know, I edit the section, we, we cover what we cover, and then sometimes the, because the Globe is a big daily newspaper, there are other sections of the paper that, that we cover.

Interact with books like, you know, certainly an op ed or the ideas section or, you know, sometimes food or sports or whatever. There's a book, uh, you know, tie in. And so I'll get dragged into coverage too. Um, but what I love best too is, is when you find a book that you really think is special and it might be a little quiet, or it might be a little off kilter, or it might be just the, you know, kind of coming out at the wrong time from a non famous person.

Um, and you want to do whatever you can. To kind of boost it up to some attention, hoping that readers will find it. Um, because, yeah, that's like the most fun part. You know what I really miss, and going on along that, is that being fun, is that ability to kind of discover a book. You know, like, obviously it's not discovered because the editor discovered it.

Right. Um, I, what I miss is when I was first started in, you know, getting into it where, Writers could be writers without being platform, prose. Yeah. Or, or having a media savvy appearance. Um, and I, I miss those days when, when there were many more outlets for a book to be covered. Yeah. Um, but also when, when people didn't.

Didn't have to feel that they had, that a book could get published without thousands of Instagram followers or whatever or any kind of social media following. And, and that was, that was really wonderful where you could, there was actually space and time for conversation about many more books. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, both, both the dollars and cents economy and the attention economy have become more challenging in the past couple of decades and it feels like it's ever on an ever faster churn.

And so that, you know, there are still newspapers doing the work and, and independent bookstores doing the work and librarians doing the work to kind of help, you know, um, shine a light on, on sort of less famous books, but they're competing with, uh, And, and, you know, in the big budgets go to, you know, those books where, you know, they're discovered on book talk or, you know, um, I actually noticed one of the questions, um, that Kate and Marni suggested was about, uh, kind of like, what do we think about like Goodreads and Amazon reviews, the sort of what, you know, the role of like, what is the role of like the professional critic in a world where there are so many amateur critics?

Um, You know, I, I wonder how much I even listen to those. I mean, you know, when I'm buying No, no, no, but, but when I'm buying a device, a gadget, I will look at the reviews for And now I'm wondering, do I, I think, I think it's different because you and I have such an in depth and long knowledge about books that we may not be swayed either way.

But I wonder if people really, and I assume that people really do read them, um, to get a sense of, oh, should I buy this? Uh, you know, an iPhone case or something, I don't know. I think readers are readers. You know, they, they, they tend to have already, if you're a reader, you tend to know what you like.

But, but maybe, you know, Put off, you know, you may be put off by something like, oh, is this the new Sally Rooney? I'm not too sure, but Right. I would like to think that people do read and, and, and are affected by, reviews such as the length that you're doing at the globe, uh, or the New York Times is.

to either maybe decide to buy the book or not. I mean, oftentimes I'll read a review or see a movie or read a movie review and realizing that the, I don't, you know, like the critic didn't like it, but I was like, you know, I still have a bit of interest in it. But when I'm looking for more, Um, and I don't know if this is the place of what we're writing, what we're doing now, is the conversation, the starting of the conversation.

I'm looking for a good, uh, thoughtful assessment of something that isn't just a , 20 word, um, either attack or, or adoring piece about a book. Right. You know, going back to NBCC, and, reviewing, um, and I, I'm very careful, and I know you are because we've talked about this before, knowing how much work goes into a book, to write a book, just to get the idea, to edit it, to market it, to publish it, I find it so, I find it hard to be, Unfairly dismissive, yes, of a book.

That being said, if there are certain celebrity books or books that I just know that were just thrown together to ride a wave, right, I don't have the same reservation to say to hold that back because I know it was more of a marketing thing or writing a wave. It's like, well, okay, it's out there as, as a piece of writing.

How does it stand? You know? Right. I mean, it's the difference between like, I have no qualms about, um, throwing away an old Happy Meal toy, but like, but like a loved, a beloved stuffed animal or set of wooden blocks. I'm like, that's an heirloom. Uh, and I do think there are, there are books that are, that are carefully crafted and that, and you know a lot of work went into it and whether you like it or not, it does demand A Certain Amount of your Respect.

At least respectful attention. You know, whereas yes, Celebrity Books. I mean, that's, I certainly saw the dark side of that while working at People Magazine. Um, , it's complicated. Right? Like the role of the, The book reviewer in that ecosystem of, you know, from, from the birth of a book to whatever, however it ends up.

I mean, I think that, um, I don't want to be a mere cheerleader. I don't want to be a cheerleader for everything, but sometimes you have to stand up and cheer and that's really exciting. Um, . What your original question about, um, Are people reading these, you know, um, these reviews?

And I like to think they are, but, Well, here's the thing. Can I, let me just jump in. Please, I want to say. Increasingly, uh, don't think of book reviews as a, um, as a, as a part of the commercial life cycle of a book. I don't think that they need to be a consumer report.

I agree with you. I read, I'll read 50 reviews before buying a new, uh, you know, screwdriver. Um, But for a book, what I want from the review is something totally different. And I still remember my mother always saying this, where she said, you know, a book review, um, a good book review, gives you enough information to have a great conversation.

at a cocktail party. Um, you don't have to pretend to have read the book, but you would say, did you see what they're saying about this new novel? Uh, you know, by thus and so, and then your conversation partner will say, well, I saw in the times they said this, or somebody will say, well, my neighbor says this.

And then it's a conversation. And like you said, part, you know, books are part of the conversation that we have as a culture. And I think a Good part of the critic's job is not necessarily to gatekeep, but to help cultivate that conversation and make sure you know, it's Relatively diverse and robust and interesting.

I mean what more can we do? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right, so we've got a limited time What are you reading now?

 Do you have any books? I do because here's one, because of my, the, the column where I interview authors, I, I read their book. Um, and so this past week, uh, I had the great pleasure of reading a novel by Jamie Attenberg.

Right. Great fiction writer. Really love her work. It's her 10th book. And I, you know, And it was fun to read a, a, a really fun, intricate, interesting family novel, um, which isn't always my kind of sweet spot, um, before interviewing her. Also, I get to read books often, um, they're for work, but I'm not reviewing them because I do a lot of like, moderating and panels and stuff like that.

So I'm reading three books right now for the, uh, Brooklyn Book Festival. Oh, great. Which is next weekend. Are you moderating? I am moderating a panel with Adele Waldman. Great. Whose book Help Wanted was about, uh, workers in a, in a box store. Um, Hari Kunzru. Great. whose title I can't remember because I haven't read that book yet.

And then the one I'm reading right now, Ryan Chapman, The Audacity, which is a book, I think a little bit about a Davos style rich person retreat, but it's a satire about wealth. So luckily, I am, You know, I mean, the great part of the job is to be surrounded by good books. Yeah, absolutely. What are you reading?

Okay, so I actually wrote this down, this is just from this past summer and books I'm currently reading. Um, Isabel Wilkerson's Warmth of Other Suns. So my son is down at the University of Alabama. Yeah. And I, having come from Florida, I also have relatives in Alabama, I wanted to get that history.

I remember when that came out, I never got a chance to read it. Uh, and, um, and I decided to pick it up. Um, my wife recently went down to Montgomery where she was, uh, visited the, uh, Legacy Museums of the Equal Justice Initiative. Yeah. Which is just amazing. She said it was just so beautiful. Moving, um, tearful the entire way.

And this is about the history of, of, Black Americans and and the former history of slaves from from the importation through Jim Crow Yeah, and and this is especially now when many southern Universities are just losing their DEI programs, you know, like like just legally you cannot have it in Florida, Georgia I think South Carolina Definitely Alabama.

And the book that I started reading was Imani Perry's South to America. Yeah. Uh, but which I have to say is one of those books, it was a Pulitzer, a Pulitzer I did not like it. Um, I, didn't enjoy her , conceit. I won't go into a whole criticism of it, but that's when I decided to revisit Isabelle Wilkerson's, which I had begun reading when it first came out So, so there's that.

And then, going on the southern theme, Eric Larson's newest book, Demon of Unrest, um, uh, that. But, uh, What I do every summer is I tend to go to, like, thrillers. Um, just as a kind of fun palate cleanser. So right now I'm reading, uh, I just read Stieg Larsson's Millennial Trilogy. Which I've never read before.

Oh my god, all three of them. Last summer was Lisa Unger's Thrillers. She's a friend of mine who I knew back from book publishing when she was a publicist for Berkley. And then, uh, I've also read Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano novels, which I love. They're like little Palate Cleansers. Um, then I'm reading Juliette Grahame's The Lost Boys of Santa Kiana.

We're gonna host her here at Watchung. Oh, please invite me! Absolutely, but also I'm gonna have her speak to my students at Montclair State. I knew her because she's the, uh, publisher of Soho Press. And, um, anyway, so those are kind of the books that most recently I've read and, you know, I can't believe I was just, you know, the Stig Larsson books, I was just, I think just like, And there was a time, honestly, when I first came to publishing, where I was like, Oh, I don't read suspense and thrillers, you know, I was only literary.

I just, just, so many of them are just such well written, page turning Well, I mean, that's another thing that's changed a lot in the last couple of decades, is just how many Highly literary writers are writing in what we used to call, very disparagingly, genre fiction. So, uh, especially in sci fi and fantasy, but also in romance, uh, and also in crime.

So, I think that a lot of those, uh, old snobberies have got to go. Absolutely. . All right. I think that may be it.

Thank you so much for talking. Oh, this is great. It's really fun. We're gonna, we're gonna turn off these mics and keep talking. Exactly. Exactly.

Marni: Thank you, Mark and Kate for sharing this talk with us and for all you do to support our community of authors and readers. Listeners, you can find all the books they talked about in our show notes and at watchungbooksellers. com. 

Kathryn: Here are some of the author events we have coming up. Tonight, Tuesday, October 8th, Aaron Robertson is in conversation with Michelle Alexander about his book, The Black Utopians, searching for a paradise and the promised land in America.

Kathryn: It's a ticketed event and a portion of the proceeds will support Friends of the Howe House. It's going to be a great conversation with a reception afterwards, so please join us. 

 Tomorrow, Wednesday, October 9th, Min Soo Kang is here with his novel, The Melancholy of Untold History, in partnership with AAPI New Jersey. And Thursday, October 10th, Emily Weinstein, Editor in Chief of the New York Times Cooking and Food, celebrates the launch of her new cookbook, Easy Weeknight Dinners, in talk with food writer Melissa Clark.

Kathryn: And next Tuesday, October 15th, high schoolers and their parents will want to come out for a college essay writing workshop.

Kathryn: With Eric Tipler, author of Writing Yourself In. . 

Marni: We've got something for everyone this fall, so please check out all of our events in our newsletter, show notes, or at watchungbooksellers. com.