Book Reviews—Their value and who reads them?

 

Since just before the Covid19 pandemic shut down in the United States, I have written 12 book reviews. It’s an aspect of publishing I rarely talk about and one that requires great concentration. It is also not clear who reads my reviews or what value they are to the author, despite the clamor to get reviews written. Each one presents its own challenges. It seems not to matter whether it is chapbook or a children’s book—the reviews all take a lot of time to develop and complete. Of the dozen reviews published between March and early September, the hardest to write were the translations.

 

Here is the list with their links.

 

09-01-20  Feminists Are Passing from Our Lives by Leslie McGrath (poetry) 

 

08-17-20  Dead Letter Office by Marko Pogačar, translated from Croatian by Andrea Jurjević

 (poetry)

 

08-01-20  Discovery by Don Krieger (poetry) 

 

07-29-20  Women of the Big Sky by Liliana Ancalao in Mapuzungun and Spanish, translated

                   from Spanish by Seth Michelson (poetry)

07-01-20  A Little Called Pauline by Gertrude Stein with art by Bianca Stone (children’s book) 

 

06-20-20  Transformer by Kathleen Winter (poetry)

 

06-09-20  Binary Planet by Henry Crawford (poetry)

 

06-01-20  Dead Shark on the N Train by Susana Case (poetry)

 

05-02-20  The High Shelf by Nadia Colburn (poetry)

 

04-29-20  They Became Stars by Liz Marlow (poetry chapbook)

 

04-17-20  Spinster for Hire by Julia Story (poetry)

 

03-01-20  A Survivor Named Trauma by Myra Sklarew (memoir, history, poetry)

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