My new year’s resolution for 2025 is to be a joyful book reviewer.
Why? Because, after four years of writing the “Passion for Prose” column, I still get asked the question (read: interrogation and antagonisation): “Why do you want to write and publish book reviews for free?”
There are several presumptions behind this question. The first and foremost, I think, is the surmise that doing something on a voluntary basis is the same as (a) slave labour or (b) exploitation or (c) a waste of time and energy or (d) pure stupidity or (e) all of the above.
Another equally obscure supposition is that all media organisations, like all online platforms operated by multinational enterprises, are rich, ruthless, exploitative and manipulative. They make you feel you are doing meaningful work because they want to profit from it.
What I suspect is a more fundamental “principle” is that, because my time is valuable, I shouldn’t waste it on useless things such as writing reviews and sharing them with others for free. i.e. It’s fine for me to read free library books, but people should pay to read my writing!
But what hurts the most is when I truly enjoy doing something and work really hard to build it in the ways I want it to be – as a writer, a journalist and even an academic – that something is deemed worthless and futile. As if whatever I do, no matter how hard I try, it is not good enough. As if I am not and will never be good enough.
Well, that’s not the way to start a new year, is it? No, no, no.
So, my new year’s resolution is to be a joyful book reviewer – to spread the joy of reading, the joy of discovering new books and revisiting good ones, and especially the joy of reviewing and recommending great books.
(In other words: “To hell with you, my inner critic! I can and will be a better critic than you! Just watch me!” )
I’ve always subscribed to renowned Australian literary critic Kerryn Goldsworthy’s view,
that a good book review should be “both favourable about its subject and skilfully, knowledgeably written on the basis of a careful, thorough reading of the book in question”. More importantly, Goldsworthy stresses: “A book reviewer has a responsibility.”
Not just to readers and potential readers of the book, but also to the writer(s) and/or editor(s) of the book. And to the publication for which you’re writing. And to yourself. Most of all: “To the literary culture in particular and indeed to the culture in general, to make a worthy contribution to it and not demean or devalue it by adding junk rather than good useful stuff.”
If I can achieve this… then, does money really matter that much?
