The review and blog panel recap

Perhaps we were helped by the listing in Gothamist, but nearly 100 people turned out at Housing Works last night for the NBCC's panel on reviewing and blogs, and how the latter will influence the shape of the former in the years to come. Scott McLemee had traveled up from Washington, NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari came in from the woods, David Orr pried himself away from Princeton, where he is a Hodder fellow, and M.A. Orthofer surfaced from his secret underground bunker. Jessa Crispin was apparently in the audience as well. Other familiar faces: NBCC members James Marcus and Heller McAlpin, Jason Warshof, and Ed Hamilton, who runs a blog about life at the Chelsea Hotel.

For all the talk about the separateness of blogging and print reviews, the panel came to the conclusion that these mediums are essentially engaged in a single (growing) conversation about books -- and blogs have merely made that conversation more visible, providing not just new points of view, but an ever expanding amount of information sites like this one or Moorishgirl.com which link to and comment upon book pages from around the world. Frank Wilson mentioned that through his blog he has been in touch with people around the world, from India to Virginia, and picked up a few new reviewers along the way. He also pointed out that newspapers have been slow to adapt to the possibilities of this new medium, but that they will need to in order to remain part of the growing online discussions.

There was something cheering about the gathering, in spite of all the recent bad news in the reviewing world. Laurie Muchnick of Newsday doesn't want her space cut back any further, but she did say losing a page freed her up from feeling compelled to review The Big New Book -- and that blogs have picked up the slack for what falls through the cracks. On the flipside, there is now increasing pressure on bloggers who have been discovered by publishers as new media outlets. Maud Newton says she still doesn't run ads, in spite of traffic that runs as high as 7500 visitors per day, because it would turn her blog into a job. Lizzie Skurnick said when she first began to blog, the feeling of being able to pick up whatever book she wanted drew her to the form. Now that she is on press lists, with new books coming to her apartment every day, she finds it harder to do that.

All of the panelists agreed that it seemed blogs were a good thing, but that the distinction between what they do and what a book review does remains salient. Frank pointed out how very hard it is to write a good review, and Lizzie mentioned that she felt even more self-conscious writing a review than when she blogs. Maud has noticed that when she is given a review assignment, she realizes that the clash of sense and sensibility is greater than when she blogs, for a review editor has tried -- and sometimes failed -- to anticipate what she would like to read.

At the end of the day, everyone pretty much agreed good writing is good writing, and what matters is whether a writer can, as James Wood does for Maud, make you readier for the reading, convey a passion for books -- be it in praise or a takedown -- and whether it be in print or online. Thanks to Lorin Stein of FSG for donating copies of books, Sean McDonald, who dropped off copies of Patrick Neate's NBCC winner, "Where You're At," Russell Perrault at Vintage and Paul Slovak at Viking, and Brenda King at Yale University Press, and, finally, Frank and Laurie who sent review copies from their book rooms to Housing Works, which exists on donations like theirs.

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