Kirkus closing

[yendi]

Wow.

Editor and Publisher is going away, too, but Kirkus is the one I've been familiar with for longer.

ETA: Ed Champion has more. Although I'm not sure I'd agree it was the last source of negative reviews (as rosefox and my YA editor at PW can attest, I've turned in my share over the last few months).

Comments

[ex-gnomicut.livejournal.com]

Well, there are more fun ways of finding out you're fired.

GodDAMN.

[yendi]

Fucking hell. They didn't send something out to their reviewers first (or at least at the same time as they informed the press)?

[ex-gnomicut.livejournal.com]

I don't even know if my editor knew! She may have learned from the press.

The willingness to be negative when necessary is why I kept reviewing for Kirkus when I stopped reviewing for other sources. My Discoveries reviews were exceedingly negative, usually, although at least one got a tentative positive review.

[blergeatkitty.livejournal.com]

I just turned in my 34th review to PW. It was, I think, my third positive one.

[rosefox]

I've always had a policy of publishing negative reviews in PW, even scathing ones. It keeps us honest.

I'm so sorry this is how you found out about Kirkus closing.

by which I mean a deep dark hole down which things fall and are never seen again.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Well.

[ex-gnomicut.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

And exactly. I've written my share of scathing reviews, and my share of glowing reviews, and -- predictably -- most of my reviews are more a mix-and-match of positive and negative. I don't think Kirkus has ever deserved its reputation as "the mean journal" (which is unfair both to Kirkus and two everyone else who is willing to give negative reviews), but there are certainly not enough outlets for reviews which are willing to regularly print the negative ones.

The funny thing is, I've had a post boiling on the back burner for a while about how important it is to have multiple sources of reviews, which was instigated by my realization that I think I wrote the only negative review of Carrie Ryan's The Forest of Hands and Teeth. Everyone else I know who has read that book (both adults and teens) has loved it, and it's just chance that for whatever reason, I was given that book to review for Kirkus and I didn't like it. So while it's important to allow for negative reviews, it equally important to make sure that one voice doesn't have the opportunity to dominate the conversation about any particular book.

What was going to be my meandering thoughts on the value of multiple review journals now just seems kind of tragic.

[yendi]

I had a streak of reviews this summer (between my two different sections) in which I liked nine straight books (and starred one). I felt sleazy, but that was just how the books fell in. More recently, I've only liked three of the last twelve books I've reviewed (although one of them is a starred review and one of my favorite books this year), and I've utterly trashed a few of them. I hated two of them so much I was tempted to just swipe the famous antepenultimate paragraph of Ebert's review of North. I suspect that each journal has given its share of nasty reviews, but people remember the ones that are about them (or their friends).

[blergeatkitty.livejournal.com]

That Ebert quote is absolutely beautiful.

I have been reviewing for about three years now and I was so excited to star a review for the first time this summer. Of course, some of the books I've gotten have been so bad I kind of want to retroactively star some of the stuff I was too harsh on when I first started reviewing. (The shining example is still the six-pound Barbara Taylor Bradford galley that was set in Courier font and contained the phrase: "It's all about power with George. He wants to wield it. Powerfully." Everything that isn't that is comparatively just a little bit better.)