Hilarious yet heartbreaking: The Reviewerspeak Award results for May 2010
Just inaugurated a couple of months ago (It's gripping! It's luminous! It's the maiden voyage of the Reviewerspeak Awards!), Kerns' Reviewspeak Awards aim is
to thought-provokingly observe, vividly record, and unflinchingly report every book reviewer cliché perpetrated daily on the hapless readers of a select number of online book review sites. To leap boldly into a Brave New World where prose isn't always lively or spare or graceful or taut or accessible or lyrical; where debut novels aren't always solid or sparkling; where characters aren't always flawed or fully realized (or, if you prefer, perfectly realized) or quirky or likable or nuanced; where authors aren't masterful or at the top of their game in every third review.
For anyone whose work has ever been savaged by a book critic, damned-by-faint-praise, or even received a rave review, Kerns' Reviewerspeak Awards posts are hilarious. See also some of her previous review-satire articles:
Posts
2 comments:
Huzzah, Sphinx Ink! (what a great name, by the way)-
Thanks so much for the mention!
Thrilled that there are serious book fiends out there who see the Reviewerspeak Awards for what I originally intended them to be -- a funny way of tarring and feathering those annoying cliches AND a way of passing judgment on all of those reviewers who are used to passing judgment on authors without anyone policing them.
Thanks again!
Michelle Kerns
That's hilarious. It's like reviewers have their own equivalent of that cheat books of phrases some enterprising romance writer published some years ago.
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