"'Woe betide the poor reviewer who must review a book on book reviewing, especially one that lashes out mercilessly at practitioners in the field. Pool, a longtime freelance reviewer and former Boston Review editor, asserts that editors too often select the wrong books and assign them to the wrong people. Reviewers in turn heap too much praise on these unworthy volumes; the reviewers are biased, unqualified, inaccurate and incompetent. (She illustrates this point with several examples of sadly laughable prose.) The pileup of criticisms is wearing, and Pool's suggested reforms, such as a reviewing code of ethics and having columnists in a variety of fields to make more knowledgeable selections of books to cover, are useful only to a point (e.g., even with a code of ethics, editors must rely on reviewers to reveal conflicts of interest). Pool is often spot-on, however, as when she opposes the 'reckless use of comparisons between books or authors' rather than stressing what is unique about a work. Everyone in the field will applaud Pool's passionate insistence on the importance to literary culture of the serious, informed critique, which is increasingly endangered and in need of such vigorous support. (July 6)' Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

People have been railing against book reviews since they started in the US at the end of the 18th century, seeing always a precipitous decline from some golden age no one seems to be able to identify. Pool is not so sanguine. A freelance journalist and reviewer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, she thinks they matter, that they influence reading, awards, and even publishing. There are pitfalls, however, and she points out to readers and to reviewers the difficulty of treading the narrow path of fairness, truth, and utility. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

For more than two hundred years, book reviewers have influenced American readers, setting our literary agenda by helping us determine not only what we read but also what we think about what we read. And for nearly as long, critics of these critics have lambasted book reviews for their overpraise, hostility, banality, and bias. Faint Praise takes a hard and long-overdue look at the institution of book reviewing. Gail Pool, herself an accomplished reviewer and review editor, analyzes the inner workings of this troubled trade to show how it works and why it so often fails to work well. By demystifying this hidden process, Pool helps everyone understand how to read reviews--and better decide what to read.