Month:June 2026

I still remember the weight of a proper book review. Not the book itself—the review. A full broadsheet page, dense with argument, alive with a critic’s voice. You would read it slowly, maybe twice, because it was not just a verdict but a conversation. The reviewer had spent weeks with the book, marking passages, chasing …
Continue reading The Slow Death of the Book Review—and Why It Matters

The Quiet Death of the Book Review: Why We’ve Stopped Wrestling with What We Read I remember the first time a book review made me feel like I’d been in a fight. It wasn’t the book itself—a sprawling, humid novel about a family of potters in post-war Japan—but the review, a 2,000-word meditation tucked into …
Continue reading The Quiet Death of the Book Review: Why We’ve Stopped Wrestling with What We Read

I miss the days when a book review was an event. You’d settle into a chair with a cup of something hot and a hefty literary supplement, ready to spend half an hour inside another reader’s head. The critic would take their time—building a case, wandering down a historical side path, admitting a moment of …
Continue reading The Incredible Shrinking Book Review: Why We’ve Lost Our Patience for Deep Reading

The Diminishing Returns of the Modern Book Review By Imran Qureshi The physical weight of a book once demanded a review of equal substance. (Photo by Suzy Hazelwood / Pexels) I remember when a book review was an event. Not a notification, not a fleeting thumbs-up, but a proper piece of writing you could sink …
Continue reading The Diminishing Returns of the Modern Book Review

I remember when a book review was a place you could linger. Not a verdict delivered in the time it takes to butter toast, but a real conversation—one that wandered, doubled back, and paused to admire a sentence that caught the light just so. The critic had room to trace a novel’s architecture, to sit …
Continue reading The Quiet Death of the Book Review: Why We Stopped Reading Closely

The Vanishing Art of the Long-Form Review I remember when a book review felt like an occasion. Not a star rating, not a three-sentence blurb, but a public conversation—rigorous and respectful. I’ve been in this trade for decades, and I’ve watched that conversation fade to a murmur. The modern book review, when it appears at …
Continue reading The Shrinking Review: Why Literary Criticism Lost Its Nerve

I remember when a book review was an event. Not a verdict squeezed into a breathless paragraph, but a slow, considered conversation between a reader, a text, and the wider world of ideas. You’d find them tucked into the back pages of literary supplements, sometimes sprawling across two or three columns, and you’d settle in …
Continue reading The Shrinking Review: Why Literary Criticism Lost Its Patience

I remember the first time I truly lost myself in a book review. It was a sprawling, 2,000-word meditation on a debut novel, tucked into the back pages of a literary magazine. The critic didn’t just tell me whether the book was good or bad; she traced the author’s influences back to obscure 19th-century diarists, …
Continue reading The Shrinking Review: Why Book Criticism Has Gotten Shorter and Lazier

I remember when a book review was something you cleared the table for. You’d unfold the Sunday paper, find the literary section, and settle into a piece that stretched across columns—paragraphs that argued, contextualised, sometimes eviscerated. The reviewer had a voice you could recognise, trust, or love to hate. Now? I open an app and …
Continue reading The Shrinking Review: Why Literary Criticism Has Grown Short and Lazy

I still remember the first book review that stopped me cold. It wasn’t a tweet, a star rating, or a breathless “must-read” blurb. It was a long, winding essay in a defunct literary supplement—the kind of piece that didn’t just tell you whether a novel was good or bad, but wrestled with it. The critic …
Continue reading The Shrinking Review: Why We’ve Lost the Art of Literary Conversation