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I remember when a book review felt like an occasion. You’d unfold the Sunday paper, and there it was—a long, winding essay that read like a conversation with your smartest, most well-read friend. The critic didn’t just hand you a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. They dug into what the book was actually about, tracing its …
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The Slow Death of the Book Review (and Why It Matters) There’s a quiet sadness in finding an abandoned bookmark. A faded receipt, a train ticket from a decade ago, wedged halfway through a secondhand novel. Someone, once, meant to finish this story. I always wonder what stopped them. Maybe the book didn’t deliver on …
Continue reading The Slow Death of the Book Review (and Why It Matters)

The quiet, sustained attention required for deep reading is often missing from the reviews it inspires. There was a time, and it’s not so far back, when a book review felt like an event. It was a meeting of minds—a serious reader sitting down with a text that had asked something of them, and then …
Continue reading The Slow Death of the Book Review (And Why We Should Mourn It)

I remember when a book review could shake the dust off a quiet literary season. Not just a thumbs-up or a string of emojis, but a real piece of writing—something you’d find in the back pages of a magazine, where a critic spent three paragraphs setting the scene before even mentioning the title. Those reviews …
Continue reading The Vanishing Art of the Book Review: Why We’ve Settled for Stars and Summaries

I still remember the weight of a Sunday newspaper in my hands—the crinkle of the book review section, pages dense with arguments that took their time. A critic would spend a thousand words teasing out a novel’s architecture, quoting generously, letting you hear the author’s voice before passing any judgment. You didn’t read those pieces …
Continue reading The Incredible Shrinking Book Review: How We Lost the Art of Reading Slowly

I still remember the first book review that truly shook me. It was tucked inside a literary magazine, the kind that smelled of old paper and ambition. The critic spent close to three thousand words untangling a single novel—tracing its debts to Chekhov, questioning its moral architecture, and, in the process, teaching me how to …
Continue reading The Shrinking Review: Why Book Criticism Is Getting Shorter and Lazier

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

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 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

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