What even is a review anyway tho

It’s totally fine, I’ve been telling myself, that I haven’t been consistently posting on here every Saturday like usual. I’m on summer hours, I say. Vacation time.

I haven’t been reading very much. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, but mostly I’ve been watching Smallville. Jonathan thinks I should write about Smallville, but even though I’ve spent way too much of my life getting through all ten (ten!) seasons, I don’t really think it’s worth writing about. Maybe next week if I still haven’t read anything, you’ll find a weird little post about the long running early aughts superman origin story tv show.

It’s been almost a year since I started this substack and it’s been a really interesting experience. I can spend quite a long time crafting an article and then get barely any likes and no comments. It’s easy to think no one is reading what I write but then I am surprised when people in real life compliment me on it. I know that real life interaction is better than online, that getting a compliment when I can see someones face is infinitely more satisfying and soul-enriching, but this website (and the algorithm-informed setup of current “social” media) has me wishing for every real compliment I get that I could say “just like my post and comment more, will you?” Partially because it drives engagement and maybe more people will see it then (although who knows if it would really make any difference) but really it’s because real world compliments don’t mitigate the feeling of creating something and sending it out into the void. And real world interaction doesn’t give you that addicting and manipulative jolt of chemicals that releases in your brain when you see that little “one” over the notification tab. It’s a feeling I am not proud of and feel really weird articulating, and I’m not sure I’m doing it justice. When I started this substack I said I was trying to create a space where I could talk about books with people. Last weekend someone brought up my post on yesteryear and we talked about the book for a few minutes. If that isn’t achieving my goal I don’t know what is. So why am I complaining? I really am grateful for everyone who has been spending time in this “attention economy” with my words.

Don’t get me wrong, there is an element of satisfaction in externalizing my thoughts on a book. I do enjoy a completed post, and often I'm quite proud of them. However, I have been wondering how much the actual act of reading has changed for me since starting this project. I wonder if it’s part of the reason it’s been harder for me to read lately - although I don’t think it’s top of the list. (The real reason is that I’m trying to get into writing another novel, which means I think I should be reading less to focus on that, but then I read less and also don’t focus on writing. thus Smallville.) Still, has the impending task of writing about my thoughts affected the way I read? I think yes.

I’ve been half-remembering for the past month that I want to re-read the odyssey before the movie comes out, then remembering that I should read the Iliad first because I've never actually read the whole thing. But now the movie comes out this weekend and I don’t think I can get through 48 books of the poetry of antiquity in two days. Especially when I’m not really reading right now. But I think of one of my old favorite movies:

Have you noticed that I never use the word “review” when I talk about the writing I do here? I’ve been wanting to address this since I started the project. Early posts were titled “Book Thoughts:” then the name of the book, but I dropped that as it was pretty clunky and made the title very long. To me, a review implies a careful study of all aspects of something, a measured critique of all facets of a work and how they interact with each other. I never wanted my work here to be measured. The word review, to me, puts a lot of pressure on the reviewer to be bringing up things that I wasn’t really interested in. This concept is ostensibly what this whole post is about but I guess I don’t really have much more to say about it.

I wouldn’t have spent the opening of this post about Television by Lauren Rothery talking about my own weird relationship with my name if I’d been calling it a review.

I wouldn’t have foregone a written based post at all for this collection of pictures of the post-its I used to write notes in the margins of Flesh by David Szalay, which I think I might be the most proud of after almost a year of doing this. I thought it was very funny.

And I definitely wouldn’t have capped my writing on Heart the Lover after a paragraph by saying “I refuse to write anymore about this tiny book because it’s so short, I will be short too.” This one is my most popular post, with likes and comments from people I do not know, which baffled and scared me when it was happening. Actually opening those onslaught1 of notifications was terrifying and I had a pit in my stomach every time.

Careful what you wish for, I guess???

But, if what I write aren’t reviews, what to call them? If you’ve noticed my strained use of “post” and “article” you will know that I’ve been struggling with how to classify what I’m doing, and “Book Thoughts” isn’t really cutting it for me. Reaction? Response? All this to say I don’t really know what this is or what I’m doing but I just don’t like labels, man, so it’s all good.

There’s been a lot of chatter on the pointlessness of reviews anyways, how reviews that discuss weak points in a book aren’t really wanted anywhere, not just because we’re in an artificially positive epidemic but because the argument is that if you haven’t read the book, a review that dissects what isn’t working about it isn’t going to make you want to read it. Maybe that’s another reason I shouldn’t call what I do here reviews, because I definitely discuss weak points and what I don’t think is developed enough about a book.

I’ve been arguing with an imaginary voice in my head that says “wow, you’re really spending a lot of time complaining about these books. Why spend time on things you don’t like? it’s like you’re obsessed with them or something.” Some form of this sentiment from another Greta Gerwig production:

To which I’d say yes. But it’s not the individual book that I love, it’s the whole concept of literature. So I’m giving attention to what I dislike about some because I really love all of it. Does that explanation excuse me from being such a hater? I hope so.

Anyways, I hope you’re having a relaxing/or eventful summer. No promises on when I’ll be posting consistently again, but I will be back eventually. I’ve got all these books that I know I should be reading, but somehow that makes me not want to read them, which has never happened to me before. Any recommendations on book to cheat with?