A Memoir, a Review, and a Plea

I have a thing about book reviews. I read them and find them useful at times. I’ve even picked up and read books I would have bypassed but for a good review written by a writer I admire or respect. But book reviews make me a little uncomfortable, probably because I never figured out how to write or give one.

Believe it or not, the Book Report is still part of the grade-school-through-graduate-education curriculums, despite the loss from those very curriculums of classes and units on grammar, phonics, and long division. This isn’t a rant against current educational trends, just a little harrumph from a person who actually learned the stuff no longer being taught but can’t figure out how to give what is essentially a third-grade book report. And this tiny, little truth creates any number of complications for me.

For example, I was reading Campbell McGrath’s latest, Seven Notebooks, on the bus awhile back and the woman sitting next to me pointed to it and asked, “What’s that?” Now, I knew she wanted me to close the book, point the cover in her direction so she could see the title, and give her my carefully thought out ten-second review, but darn it, I was in the middle of reading it, not thinking about summarizing or describing it, and my first impulse was to reply, “What? This? This, my dear, is called a book,” then glare at her for her inept interruption of my reading time.

Thankfully, I rarely act on my first impulses. Instead, I showed her the book’s cover then continued reading and she popped her ear bud back in and resumed listening, so the rest of the ride with my seatmate was comfortably pleasant. Plus, I successfully avoided having to say anything at all about the book, which, by the way, I liked.

See? I’m just naturally disinclined toward book reviews. But I read (a lot), and because people know this about me they have a tendency to ask me what I am reading, or have read, or am planning to read and what I think about what I am reading, or have read, or am planning to read. And because I read (a lot), I often run across surprises—books that are inspiring, erudite, impassioned, or all together good tall tales—that I just have to share with my nearest and dearest reader friends. But when it comes right down to it, about all I can come up with to recommend or describe the book to anyone is that I liked, loved, or hated the title or author in question, and even I don’t think that’s a compelling enough reason to pick up a book and read it.

I’m in just such a pickle now. I loved Lewis Buzbee’s The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop because it is exactly what the sub-title (A Memoir, a History) promises and I love books in which good writers write about their passions, in this case, Buzbee’s life-long love of books and bookshops. I want to recommend this book to Troy at Troy’s Work Table because as a bookshop connoisseur, inveterate reader, and writer extraordinaire himself, it seems to me that Troy would (if he hasn’t already read it) enjoy The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop. But I don’t quite know what else to say about it, and I can’t very well be so arrogant as to expect him to be even remotely interested in the book just because I loved it and am certain he will too, now can I?

So, if you happen to know of a helpful resource on writing book reviews, would you be so kind as to send me a short review, including the title and author’s name, so I may determine if the resource would be useful to me in my continuing education and in recommending The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop to Troy? Thanks.