Do you think there's an incentive to be too positive or some other skew in the book review process? I like amazon because i can get a lot of information about out of amazon they're really that the way uh the information is presented. One of the things i find remarkable about my site is um i try to link to big media reviews and an extraordinary number of the books which i cover basically go unreviewed in major media often even in publishers weekly.
Michael Orthofer, one of the world’s most prolific book reviewers, joins Tyler Cowen for a conversation on — what else? — books. Read to discover why Michael believes everyone should read more fiction, how we should choose books, why American popular literature is overrated, what he thinks about authors like Herman Melville, Fyoder Dostoevsky, Goethe, J.K. Rowling, Arno Schmidt, and many others, his recommendations for the best sites for readers, why studying literature at college was such a big disappointment, how much book covers matter, and why his opinion will never be the final word.
Check out the reader Q&A here and the Strand shopping video here.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
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