Goodreads and book blogging

I've been reviewing books on Goodreads since autumn 2011, and the posts on this blog are, so far, pasted from there, sometimes with minor edits. Whilst I've long been in the habit of weaving other topics and tangents into my reviews (inspired by the LRB approach, although I'm not pretending these posts are as polished as an LRB article), a blog provides the opportunity for posts on other subjects, or on groupings of books, in a way that Goodreads does not so readily - and I hope to write a few of those on here.

I have also written reviews of films and music on similar social cataloguing sites, but it has been around books that I've found the most interesting discussion and a place for the sort of writing I wanted to do.

The worlds of Goodreads and of [literary-fiction] book blogging have crossed over increasingly in recent years, with more bloggers participating on GR, but there are still some differing values and trends. One is the aversion in the blogosphere, small literary journals and new media sites to posting negative reviews - often these reviewers aspire to, or already do, mix with authors on social media and/or at literary events, so it can be awkward to criticise their work, and they do not have the permanency and status of newspaper critics or tenured academics, who can be negative with fewer consequences. Meanwhile, there are places on Goodreads (such as the Feedback Group) where it is openly stated that prolific posters have lower trust in others whose average rating for books is too high. As on quite a few topics, my opinions have evolved over the last few years. I grew up reading British broadsheet book sections of the late 1980s onwards, and the music press of the 1990s; the hatchet job was considered an art form and as a teenager I wanted to be a journalist. So it's not surprising that I felt more at home in a setting where negative reviews were welcome - even though I don't write a lot of them in practice. (Life's too short to spend your leisure time reading books you don't think you'll like.) However, the polarisation and increased antagonism of online discourse and wider politics in the last couple of years has meant that I no longer see old-school Christopher Hitchens style polemic and bluster as something to aspire to in online discussion. (His pronouncements on being prepared to change one's mind, however, remain a touchstone and regardless of my disagreement with some of the directions in which he changed his in his last decade.) I've always felt it's important to try to understand other viewpoints without losing oneself, but it feels more important now. It's a complicated - and interesting - time to talk about the way and extent to which opinions are expressed, and I don't have any definite conclusions, which may be for the best. Anyway, I figure that for now, I will not cross-post negative reviews to the blog, apart from one or two of my favourite essay-reviews which are substantially about other topics as well as the book.

I have wanted to write about books for places other than Goodreads for several years now, and a handful of friends have tried to nudge me towards it - but I blocked myself with, among other reasons, but not limited to, a diffidence about the other social media which are the best avenues towards this, and a lack of inspiration and pessimism about pitching from scratch. (Whereas with duller commercial writing, there are listings or ads to respond to, and there's a reasonable sense of what is required).

The bloggers' Man Booker International Shadow Jury (or IFFP Shadow Jury as it then was) is a project I've wanted to participate in since I first became aware of it. I think it was in early 2016 when I first tentatively enquired about getting involved, but I then decided not to do it. Actually going ahead with it - there's never going to be a perfect time, so I may as well get on with it - is a way of giving myself a kick up the arse towards writing about books beyond Goodreads.