Book reviews are gaslighting us

With professional book reviewing nearly dead, we examine how the industry itself is partly to blame. Book reviews are more cheerleading than commentary. Let's learn why this happened and, hopefully, have a little bit of fun along the way. I write on Substack: https://substack.com/@belowthefray My Substack Post on this topic some excellent responses including by Lincoln Michel https://substack.com/@thelincoln/p-19... And Sean deLone dissects what makes for a good or bad book review: https://substack.com/@dearheadofmine/... —VIDEO— Pete Holmes' show, Ex-Men Gambit Outtakes:    • Ex-Men: Gambit Outtakes   The opening movie is Little Women (2019) "Five bags of popcorn" clips is from On Cinema At the Cinema:    • On Cinema (S1, Ep. 101): 'The Man with the...   —MUSIC— Heron Vale - Into the Blue    • Into the Blue   Notize - Glow Motion    • Glow Motion   CNTRL S - SpaceTimeThought    • SpaceTimeThought   Bortexx - Living    • Borrtex - Living (Official Audio)   Risian - The Tempest    • The Tempest Violin Concerto   Oh, Yeah, Life - Just for Kicks https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music... —SOURCES OF INFORMATION— “Where Have All the Book Reviews Gone?” by Dwight Garner, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/27/bo... Number of humans in space currently: https://whoisinspace.com/ Estimated number of book critics in America: https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2025... Bezos statement after mass layoffs at Washington Post: https://www.businessinsider.com/washi... Edgar Allen Poe on book reviews: https://www.eapoe.org/works/misc/litr... Paraic O’Donnell collects book review cliches: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo... Elizabeth Hardwick “The Decline of Book Reviewing” in Harper’s (1959): https://harpers.org/archive/1959/10/t... BookMarks by LitHub: https://bookmarks.reviews/category/fi... Quotes from Dan Danfield, Steph Cha from “The Book Review is Dead, Long Live the Book Review” in LitHub: https://bookmarks.reviews/the-book-re... Summer Brennan: https://substack.com/profile/933515-s... “The Reductive Practice of Assigning Book Reviews by Identity” by Jay Kaspian Kang, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/op... Victor LaValle on reviewing while Black: https://x.com/victorlavalle/status/11... When Kirkus removed a star from a review after YA twitter backlash: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cul... “Why Book Reviewing Isn’t Going Anywhere,” an interview with Phillipa Chong, The American Scholar: https://theamericanscholar.org/why-bo... Peter Conrad for the Guardian reviews Philippa Chong’s book: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202... “Whither the Hatchet Job?” by Clive James, New York Times: https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionat... New Republic review of The Goldfinch: https://newrepublic.com/article/11507... The bigolas dickolas tweet: https://x.com/maskofbun/status/165508... Lincoln Michel’s Thoughts on the Bad State of Book Reviews: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/i... George Saunders and “The Coveted Unsullied Read”: https://georgesaunders.substack.com/p... John Updike quote on book reviewing: https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2025... Jared Henderson, “The Great Bifurcation”: https://jaredhenderson.substack.com/p... “Like This of Die” by Christian Lorentzen, Harper’s: https://harpers.org/archive/2019/04/l... Some great book reviewing writers on Substack: Brandon Taylor: https://substack.com/@blgtylr Alexander Sorondo: https://substack.com/@alexandersorondo Naomi Kanakia: https://substack.com/@naomik Lost Lambs USA Today Bestseller: https://www.usatoday.com/booklist/boo... “Garth Greenwell’s book is unreadable,” by Naomi Kanakia: https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/ga... 0:00 intro 1:57 toxic positivity 6:31 reviews as recommendations 7:42 written by freelancers 11:05 students grading students 13:29 bad reviews are good 20:09 the manifesto