Can I comment late? Just wanted to say I loved this post. And even the discussion after!
I found this site only recently (after the DA article) and am enjoying the entries/reviews. Thanks.

Thanks! I like to think my best blogging accomplishment is attracting great commenters and inspiring a few of them (or irritating them enough to get them to) to take up the issues I raise.

I found this site only recently (after the DA article) and am enjoying the entries/reviews. Thanks.

I have been given some set downs on review blogs for attempting to (diplomatically, I thought) “challenge” review authors on what I considered to be objective components of their reviews.

That’s odd; I’d have expected more give on the objective topics, as those can be argued without as quickly devolving into wishy-washily validating every possible opinion.

Though now I think of it, I’ve seen some rather truculent exchanges over whether or not a book is “well written”. I think those often arise from a confusion between enjoyment and technique, but whatever the reason, it seems to fit your experience.

Personally, I have been given some set downs on review blogs for attempting to (diplomatically, I thought) “challenge” review authors on what I considered to be objective components of their reviews. It’s clear that this is not usually welcome. It’s just not a part of this subculture, perhaps for good reason (everyone gets along better that way, for one thing).

I think there’s a difference between saying that every book is as good as another and acknowledging that valuation is largely subjective. For example, I believe that there are certain objective measures of craft we can apply to evaluating books, but the measure of how well a book worked for a particular reader is, IMO, purely subjective.

Still, I don’t know if that’s the same thing as positing an equivalence among all books, or whether it’s simply an acknowledgment that how well each of us likes a book cannot be objectively predicted. And that enjoying a book is not necessarily correlative to how *good* a book is. Because for me, at least there are more than a few books out there I’ve enjoyed even though I think they’re, well, bad.

I guess this opens up the question of how the process of evaluation does or does not set the objective value of books, as well as whether a book’s potential value to any particular reader suggests an equivalence of all books within a particular set to all readers.

I will try to fix the editing problem.

You’re right, there are lots of reviews. But the dominant conception of what the reviewer is doing is “reporting my feelings about a book.”  (For example, in reply to Sarah’s Letter of Opinion on the Ethics of Reviewing at DA, Jane wrote: “I think that most people know that when they read a review, it truly is only one person’s subjective opinion”). That conception of reviewing is consistent with the idea that every book is as good as every other, once you leave the subjective point of view.

I’m not sure who or what you’re referring to here, but since most romance review sites give quite specific grades to each book, and since many readers have described how they have favourite authors, vote in polls for their favourite books of the year etc., I’ve always thought of most romance readers as having no commitment “to the idea that every book is as good as every other.” A recent example of this opposition to the idea that all books are just as good as each other is  Sarah Frantz’s recent post in which she stated that Scott’s Waverley is a bad book and Anah Crow’s Uneven is a good one.

My own answer to the question of whether some books are better than others is here.

Kristie and Carolyn Jean — yes, it;s been like walking into a wardrobe and ending up in Narnia. You get turned around, but you get a new source of wonder and enjoyment. This is the first hobby I think I’ve ever had in my life.

Mojo — I am glad someone agrees with me on the drama question. contented doesn’t have to mean bored or frustrated.

RfP — I didn’t say anything about the relative merits of genre fiction, incuding romance, versus “literature” in the post. I agree completely that the dismissal of, for example, the western canon as “dead white men’s” books, is incorrect and unproductive and possibly dangerous.

I have spent my adult life critiquing the androcentrism of my dicsipline’s canon from a feminist p.o.v, and attempting to diversity and enrich the curriculum of my department and university with more women writers and more feminist writers. But I would never throw the baby out with the bathwater.

More controversially, at least among the romance crowd, I am not committed to the idea that every book is as good as every other, nor even the idea that every genre is as good as every other.