Online book reviews: word-of-mouth about good reads

Happy World Reading Day! (or World Book and Copyright Day, if you prefer.) As part of book-related activities on 23 April, Xinhua bookstores are offering discounts and Chinese government agencies are promoting reading among the people.

But how should you pick what to read? Can you trust newspaper book reviews to be honest criticism and not merely disguised press releases?

Back in January, Wang Danhua, a freelance translator and writer, discussed Internet literature with the literary website Paper Republic. During the interview she touched upon the topic of book reviews:

“Now, Douban is a good resource for information about books you’re interested in, and seeing other readers’ reactions. If I want to know if a book is worth reading, I’ll look on Douban. If you read actual book reviews elsewhere, those are written by professional critics, and they’re mostly marketing tactics. I read China Reading Weekly (中华读书报) and Publishers Magazine (出版人杂志), but there’s not much real criticism in there, to be frank, it’s mostly sales. I worked briefly at a publishing house, and that was my job—I wrote press releases about new books and sent them around to journalists. I couldn’t stand it. The book might be trash, but the ‘critics’ are just writing what the publishing houses give them. The comments on Douban might be shallow, but at least they’re honest.

Earlier this month, China Reading Weekly talked to Dong Ningwen, an editor of book-related publications, about “grass-roots” book reviews—criticism posted on Douban and other places online. In the interview translated below, Dong doesn’t mention the paid review problem that plagues the print media, but he does agree with Wang’s points about the usefulness of online reviews.

He also notes that the boundary between traditional reviews and “grass-roots” criticism is becoming increasingly fluid—many of the reviewers who show up in print media keep blogs, and good blog-based criticism sometimes shows up in newspapers.

Dong Ningwen, pen-name Zicong, was born in 1966 in Nanjing. At the beginning of 1996, he started work as an editor with Yilin Publishing House’s Yilin Review. In 2000, he became editor of Open Book (开卷) [the newsletter of Nanjing’s Phoenix Book Club]. In 2003, he published the essay collection Ties With Book and People. To date he has edited three installments of the “Open Book Series,” and the “Open Book Reading Series” that he co-edited with Qiu He was just published by the Nanjing Normal University Press.

China Reading Weekly: Six months ago, Sina’s Book Channel launched a “public book review group,” with the intention of consolidating the strength of grass-roots book reviews and setting out space for netizen’s book reviews. Their slogan was “Select book critics from the masses, build a high-quality reading lifestyle.” In your view, what type of criticism does the term “grass-roots book review” refer to?

Dong Ningwen: We typically use the term “book review” to refer to something relatively conventional put out by some academic or professional. You can trace this back to Xiao Qian in the thirties and forties, and then there’s the New York Times book review, and so forth. But I see “grass-roots book reviews” as something different, a concept much broader than that: commentary related to books that netizens publish themselves on online platforms like Sina’s “Public Book Critics” site. They may not be as systematic as conventional reviews—there’s much more freedom as to form, language, and even length.

CRW: What do you mean by “much more freedom”?

Dong: Compared to the professional nature of conventional book reviews, grass-roots criticism is more inviting, and less distanced from the reader. The majority of conventional book reviews—that is, book reviews written by most academics—follow certain methods and forms; they stand aloof and are somewhat condescending to readers’ tastes. They aren’t really on the same level as the reader. Instead, they are like a teacher standing at the lectern imparting knowledge to students, while the students themselves are more or less passive listeners.

Grass-roots book reviews, as I understand them, are more web-based. If you want a less-than-rigorous definition: they’re just book reviews by netizens. The Internet is a different sort of communications platform from print-based media. It’s quicker, livelier, and more egalitarian. The majority of grass-roots reviews exist because someone read a book and felt they had something to say so they wrote down their thoughts. There’s no need to adhere to some pre-existing formula, and there’s no word limit—if you have more to say, then you can write hundreds or thousands of words; if you have less to say, then three or five lines might be sufficient. It’s really free and casual. Also, writers and readers can easily interact and can freely exchange ideas.

CJW: Indeed. Like Douban, for instance, which won the “New Media of the Year” title at the 2007 China Book Industry Awards: they have various types of book reviews, both long and short, written in all kinds of styles. You don’t even know the real names or identities of most of the writers, but looking at the reviews on Douban is becoming a way to get a first sense of direction for more and more readers.

Dong: True. This is a good thing. The audience of the Internet isn’t a fixed group of readers, as is the case with newspapers and periodicals. Some people don’t read print media, but they go online. If grass-roots book reviews can lead these people to read books, then what does it matter what sort of reviews they are? This is a new force that deserves to be recognized.

CJW: In light of this kind of trend, do you believe that the Internet has qualities that make it better suited to making recommendations than the print media? Or, in other words, do the more easily-approachable grass-roots book reviews have an even greater advantage when compared to conventional book reviews?

Dong: They’re not mutually-exclusive—they ought to be complementary, working together to promote the development of book criticism and the overall climate of book reading in society. Their audiences are different, and they focus on different areas. Grass-roots reviews more often resemble readers’ reactions: they’re more casual and personalized, yet their feistiness covers a possible lack of professionalism. Grass-roots reviews have few restrictions, they’re not carefully contained pieces of criticism. They can be more real and objective, but this does not necessarily make them well-written. And the openness of the Internet provides advantages as well as disadvantages. To provide a short example: one advantage of print media is that it filters out impurities, but the Internet does not. Extreme, overly-caustic language is in evidence all over the Internet, despite the fact that it violates the principles of “fairness and objectivity” that book critics should follow.

But my views on grass-roots book reviews aren’t rally all that absolute. Netizens come in all shapes and sizes, and on Douban you can run across lots of famous people. Besides, people publish book reviews on their blogs, and this includes lots of fairly well-known writers. Would you call those “grass roots” or “conventional” book reviews?

CRW: It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white so long as it catches mice. It doesn’t matter what form the book review takes—so long as it promotes reading among the populace and social progress, or if it contributes to self-improvement, then it deserves support?

Dong: Indeed. The form isn’t the important thing. When I edited the “My” series (My Study, My Encounters With Books, My Pseudonyms, and My Free Seals), lots of people wrote reviews—grass roots and famous writers both. A truly good book will accumulate reviews into word-of-mouth, and that praise will spur other writers to write their own reviews, forming a virtuous cycle.

On the other hand, we shouldn’t overrate the use of book reviews, just as we shouldn’t underestimate the force of the audience themselves. A book exists as an independent unit; it’s not good merely because someone says it is, nor is it bad simply because someone calls it that. Reviews can exert an influence on an ordinary reader, but they may not be able to on a mature reader.

CRW: Building on the foundation of the past two years, the Central Publicity Department, the Party Office of Spiritual Civilization Development and Guidance, and the General Administration of Press and Publication have continued to promote civic reading activities. These nationwide activities ought to be good for the development of book reviews in all areas.

Dong: Like I said before, conventional book reviews and grass-roots reviews are not enemies. They each have their own strong points, and they both can make progress. The most important thing is to find a point of connection that will allow the two to better harmonize and unite. I think that everyone can be a book critic, so long as you enjoy reading and can express your opinion in words, then even a short several-hundred words can form a good book review. I also hope, whether this year, next year, or in the future, regardless of whether “reading activities” are held, that everyone can pick up a book and a pen and be a book critic.