The blogosphere is buzzing about the decline and in some cases disappearance of newspaper book review sections, after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced that it was discontinuing its review section.
Colleen Mondor, in her great blog Chasing Ray, broadened and clarified the discussion in her post of May 1. The issue is not fundamentally about newsprint reviews, but access to books.
She says,
"Is this (the decline of newspaper reviews) the big important battle we should be paying attention to?
No. Not by a long shot.
Why aren't we all up in arms about public libraries?
What about funding for emergency book mobiles?
What about increasing the hours in school libraries for the communities to use?
I don't know - what about coming up with ideas to help the community get more access to books? And what about the poor kids who spend time in the juvenile justice system in the city of New Orleans? Not a library to be found in those detention centers - except the ones that volunteers are putting together on their own.
Why aren't there letter writing campaigns in support of libraries across America? Shouldn't there be at least a bookmobile in every rural community and inner city neighborhood? Shouldn't we be striving to make sure every Headstart Program has a library, every Girls and Boys Club? Why is the literary community more concerned about reviewing books then making sure that books get to the people who have the lowest access to them? On NPR John Freeman made a point of saying that while lit blogs are a good thing, not everyone has a computer. He suggested that newspapers are the choice of the people who can't get to computers (can't afford them basically). So I guess newspaper book reviewers are apparently reviewing for the "masses". But if you can't get the damn books then what does the review matter?
Sunday, May 6, 2007
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2 comments:
Book clubs are using amazon.com for info to prepare for a book club session. So sources of reviews are expanding. A kind of Wikipedia thing without much moderation.
Books have become much cheaper via the web. They are really cheap via ABEbooks and the like. And you have media mail in the USA so shipping is cheap. Great books for under 5.00 including shipping. Check it out. Hurray for all that.
John is absolutely right. Books are everywhere in the rich world. Amazon has a very good platform for reader reviews, and I occasionally write reviews if I think I have anything worth saying.
One problem with the wiki world, however, it that without the centralizing authority of the newspaper reviewer, few people read the same books and there is less liklihood of conversation and exchange of, and about, books.
Books are, nonetheless, everywqhere, as I said, and people are trying to give them away. There are "leave a book" programs sprouting up, encouraging people to simply leave books at diners, public parks, stores, and shopping malls. I recently read of a seller who was unable to give away or even throw away his spare books and had to burn them.
Surely agencies like Philadelphia's now moribund Book Bank, manned by volunteers from Teach for America and Vista, are needed to re-disibute books to needy places. The bank provided free libraries to urban schools; teachers merely had to show up with vans.
I recently gave 8,000 volumes to an Africa Book Project, for distribution to schools and colleges. A volunteer runs this as a labor of love, but what with his huge bookmobiles and shipping it is very costly. I hated to give those wonderful books away but I could no longer house them.
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