The Critical I: Six Questions for Entertainment Weekly critic Jennifer Reese

AS PART of an ongoing series, the NBCC will be talking to book editors and critics around the country. We recently caught up with board member Jennifer Reese, who is Entertainment Weekly's book critic.

Q: You have written of travel, pregnancy, college admissions, and even soldiers overseas in Iraq. But most people know you as a book critic --do you ever feel like you have an alter ego?

A: Hey, doesn't everyone need an alter ego? Actually I write almost exclusively about books these days, but occasionally I do get out of the house. I think it's probably healthy.

Q: Your reviews of "A Disorder Peculiar to the Country," "Theft" and "Talk Talk" were slightly less favorable then many others. Do you ever feel as if you are out of step with consensus?

A: There have been at least a few mixed reviews of all those books, so no, I don't feel out-of-step. Only once did I feel totally out-of-step and it was both fascinating and horrifying. The book was Philip Roth's Plot Against America and with each new rapturous review I felt more and more isolated. Unfortunately, I had written my lukewarm review at the beginning of the tidal wave of praise and only later did I figure out with precision everything that infuriated me about the novel. I took heat for that review. Very unpleasant, very interesting experience. I've never thought harder about a book.

Q: How do you write your reviews? Do you take notes as you read? Do you make an outline? Do you just start doodling and see what comes up?

A: If something occurs to me, I jot it down in the back of the book. And I flag all the passages I want to remember or quote. Sometimes I know exactly what I want to say right off the bat; other times I have to wash a lot of dishes, weed the garden, take a walk before I figure it out. No outlines.

Q: In a review of a book called "King Dork," you wrote "High school is the great, universal American experience, and even decades later there are few subjects I warm to more quickly than a juicy account of that traumatic rite of passage." Sounds like there's a story here. Were you a book nerd growing up?

A: I wish I'd been a nerd! But it was worse -- I was innocuous. I was always a book worm, though in high school my taste ran to anything with couples embracing on the cover. I had great taste as a little kid, and reasonable taste again after age 18.

Q: Do you ever read children's books now? Were you a Harry Potter fan?

A: Never enjoyed Harry Potter, but I recently rediscovered Beverly Cleary and she's just awesome.

Q: Clearly, it was your taste in literature that Entertainment Weekly cottoned to. Seriously, though, what's really gotten under skin so far this year?

A: What's wrong with my taste? Do you have something against "Ramona?" If you mean "gotten under my skin" in a good way -- Stephen McCauley's Alternatives to Sex, Alison Bechdel's amazing Fun Home, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love--which actually made me want to visit an ashram--and the aforementioned King Dork. I also just finished a terrific biography of the science fiction writer James Tiptree by Julie Phillips. Couldn't put that one down.