Alpha Ralpha Boulevard

In the course of another conversation, desperance sent me off to this wonderful post on Cordwainer Smith. Postmodernism as the Rediscovery of Mankind: I like it - and may even view postmodernism more kindly as a result.

But don't count on it.

Talking about talking about books.

I occasionally rant about on-line reviews, to the effect that "That's not a review, it's a plot summary". There is clearly a convention that outlining the early stages of the story is part - a major part - of the reviewer's duty. At the same time, to refer to something which is revealed beyond a certain point in the book is to spoiler. My problem is that I have very little sense of where that point is. On the one hand, if I am writing about a book, I want to discuss the whole book, which might well include how the characters respond to events, or how satisfying I find the ending. On the other hand, I read reviews to help me choose what to read: once I have chosen, I would like come to a book knowing as little as possible about it. So I feel mildly spoilered by almost any plot summary.

( Example: a review of 'Hidden Depths' )

I'm currently deep in matociquala's Blood and Iron, and I was thinking about a pattern I had discerned in it, and that I might be able to say something sufficiently coherent about it to post here, in the fullness of time - and realised that not only is there something inherently spoilerish about picking over a book with triumphant cries of "Hey, I got a theme!", the clever title I had thought of for the post was in itself spoilerish. Yes, I can put in cuts, and yes, I can put up warnings - but I realise that I cannot be trusted to recognise a spoiler when I see one.

In that sense, I want to write critiques rather than reviews, assessments of books to be read by those who have read the book first (or who are prepared to make a pretence of having read the book, or at the very least claim no special treatment because they have not read the book). But this sounds very grand, and more thorough than my scattershot impressions can ever be. Really, all I want to do is talk about books.