Book Critique Quotes

You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a ­romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

I look upon book reviews as an infantile disease which new-born books are subject to.

'Push' had a story, 'The Paperboy' story you could just throw up in the air and shoot holes through the book because the story wasn't as strong. But I felt the characters were stronger in 'The Paperboy'; they were vivid.

A book reviewer is usually a barker before the door of a publisher's circus.

A book is not harmless merely because no one is consciously offended by it.

There's an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book.

I often find myself unsatisfied with books 'about' Indians because they are written from the viewpoint of non-Indians.

One of the greatest creations of the human mind is the art of reviewing books without having read them.

the Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.

If a work alienates a reader, should that be counted against it? I respect people that love 'Ulysses,' for example, but I'm on the other side of the argument. 'Ulysses' would be better if it seduced me. But I probably have the minority point of view.

There are scenes from books I'm happy with. I tend to think my books are all broken. But then my favourite reads are almost always books that don't, in the end, pull off what they set out to do.

I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.

How much of a book review is about the reviewer? Sometimes it's mostly about the reviewer!

The only parts I like out of any of those women books is the dirty parts. But I don't think their dirty parts are any good, really.

I don't generally read reviews.

I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works.

The one test I have for every completed book is if I feel head over heels in love with the hero. If he hasn't stolen my heart from the previous hero, I know the book isn't right.

I normally hate books that have anything to do with medicine, thanks to my own background in nursing - FYI, almost everybody gets it wrong.

Thus Mr. Lawrence, Mr. Douglas and Mr. Joyce partly spoil their books for women readers by their display of self-conscious virility; and Mr. Hemingway, but much less violently, follows suit.

There are some things fundamentally off about the stance of the book. And maybe that's okay; maybe every book is flawed, and great books, as flawed as they might be, articulate a moral argument that the reader then carries forward. The critique to this model is, of course, to ask: Should a book be ever so perfect that you come out of it with complete moral agreement that can be sustained?

[On Edna Ferber's Ice Palace] ... the book, which is going to be a movie, has the plot and characters of a book which is going to be a movie.

I got halfway through 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.' I don't get it at all. What's the big thrill? It's boring.

It's been said that the men in my books have been absent, or weak, or creepy.

I hate to ask about the title, because it makes it seem like that is all I've read of the book.