First someone posted a very nice comment on the NOLA change of address entry and it got deleted by mistake. So if that was you, sorry! And don't take it personally!

Sarah Weinman also picked up the link at the NBCC about genre book reviewing and made some very good points over at her blog. Then everyone started commenting - lots of opinions but I don't think anyone really knows how to convince the critics to respect genre titles. I think I just became a Tod Goldberg stalker though from his comment:

Apply the same level of criticism to crime fiction as you do literary fiction and I think a lot of the popular writers of our time would wilt. Maybe I'll review the new Robert Parker novel and say what no one has said in print, but should: Dude, this [is] 28K words long and 25 bucks. Susan Silverman is Alan Alda in drag. Hawk should go to fucking prison. Spenser would have heart disease with all that fucking pasta he makes. And Encyclopedia Brown could solve the crime, and, probably, his cousin Wikipedia Green could probably to do it, too. That I'd pay to see.

You'll have to pardon me for a moment, I'm still laughing hysterically over this one!

In the world of Colleen's literary coincidences, I read the latest issue of Slightly Foxed last night (wonderful as always) and learned that Daphne du Maurier"s book The Parasites is set at a country house called Farthings. Well that's weird. So did Jo Walton read du Maurier at some point or did the name just land in her head somehow? And more importantly, why would I write about one Farthing estate one day and then read about another on the next?

I swear sometimes the universe really freaks me out.

Jenny D. has a link and some thoughts on Balzac and writing under pressure. I need to write more (don't nearly all writers say that?), but when the days include swimming lessons and tumbling class and washing the dogs (both of them - after brushing a million pounds of fur off of them and all over the yard) and the fun that is Quickbooks for dealing with the business that keeps our happy home secure and happy, well, somehow the writing does not get done. And then I wonder if this book is the right book to be writing at this moment - this YA book that no one has said beans about and might just be an exercise in frustration and might be too much of a cliche and might be just too common and predictable. (Could it be? Possibly? Oh how I worry!)

I guess I should be a bit more like Balzac and just plow through it. Then it would be done and I could move on to one of those cups of coffee he apparently loved.

Finally, in the midst of all these genre discussions one thing has been nagging at me that I think needs to be mentioned. I don't think someone who has no background in reading science fiction can adequately review science fiction. Same goes for fantasy or romance or mystery. It's not as easy as it looks, this revewing business and if you don't have some basis for comparison - if you don't know who the hell Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour were, then should you be reviewing westerns? And you can't just name drop cause you've seen the books in the store - you have to know about Hondo and the Sacketts and heck, what movies were based on what novels. I mean you have to at least know something about the authors who have been giants in that particular arena. I have read a ton of genre fiction in my life (all kinds of genres baby!) and I get very concerned sometimes when I review some books. Yes I know my Bradbury and I've read more than a few space operas but can I make the same sort of comparisons and conclusions that someone like Justine could? Oh please - not even close. And the same would go for my abilty to review a mystery on the caliber of Bookslut's Clayton Moore. So when I read about literary critics not wanting to review genre fiction part of me thinks, well - they shouldn't. I think the better thing would be for them to occasionally just get out of the way and let someone have some column inches who knows the field. Out in those particular ballparks they just might get their asses kicked by the folks who know what they're talking about - not because one type of books is easier or smarter or whatever than the others, but because they all come with their own style and history and legacies. Is Jonathan Lethem better than Jo Walton? Of course not. And don't think for a minute that just because you've reviewed Lethem you are ready for coasting on a review of Walton's alt history.

One is not the other and from where I'm sitting, the reviewings not the same animal either.