#review

The Concord public library committee deserve well of the public by their action in banishing Mark Twain’s new book, Huckleberry Finn, on the ground that it is trashy and vicious. It is time that this influential pseudonym should cease to carry into homes and libraries unworthy productions… The advertising samples of this book, which have disfigured the Century magazine, are enough to tell any reader how offensive the whole thing must be. They are no better in tone than the dime novels which flood the blood-and-thunder reading population… his literary skill is, of course, superior, but their moral level is low, and their perusal cannot be anything less than harmful ↗

— The New York Times

#home

I've never had a movie that got great reviews. I've had movies that got different levels of good and bad reviews, but you can more or less count on plenty of bad reviews. ↗

— Wes Anderson

#count #different #different levels #good #good and bad

Most people feel best about their work the week before their vacation, but it's not because of the vacation itself. What do you do the last week before you leave on a big trip? You clean up, close up, clarify, and renegotiate all your agreements with yourself and others. I just suggest that you do this weekly instead of yearly. ↗

— David Allen

#reviewing #work #art

Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lectures fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly self-limiting level, anyone does it in the first place. ↗

— Joan Didion

#criticism #film #movie #reviewers #movies

Nature fits all her children with something to do, he who would write and can't write, can surely review. ↗

— James Russell Lowell

#review #reviewers #writing #nature

I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#interview #job #judgement #observation #paris-review

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it. ↗

— Moses Hadas

#books #classic-insult #irony #literary-criticism #time

Even ivory towers need central heating. ↗

— Breyten Breytenbach

#new-york-times-review #poetry #satire #satire

Besides,” said Mr Norrell, “I really have no desire to write reviews of other people's books. Modern publications upon magic are the most pernicious things in the world, full of misinformation and wrong opinions.” “Then sir, you may say so. The ruder you are, the more the editors will be delighted.” “But it is my own opinions which I wish to make better known, not other people's.” “Ah, but, sir,” said Lascelles, “it is precisely by passing judgements upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.” “Hmm,” said Mr Norrell thoughtfully, “you may be right. But, no. It would seem as if I were lending support to what ought never to have been published in the first place. ↗

— Susanna Clarke

#publishing #reviews #satire #satire

A mathematician is an individual who believes that prophesying that his dog will die if he deprives it of food constitutes a prediction. ↗

— Bill Gaede

#gaede #god #mathematics #peer-review #physics