Earlier this year The Boston Globe discontinued Katherine A. Powers‘s longtime literary column ”A Reading Life.” The column was later resurrected at The Barnes and Noble Review. Reading Powers’s third column at her new home, a review of Erik Larson‘s In The Garden of the Beasts, it struck me how this move—ostensibly from a 100+ year-old, 21-Pulitzer newspaper to a glorified book chain blog—was clearly a step up rather than down. For example, consider design. Powers’s last column at The Boston Globe was a pitiful sliver of text surrounded by garish ads. Perhaps the print version redeems it, but at least in its online incarnation, there is nothing to suggest care or seriousness in the Globe’s presentation.

The B&N Review, on the other hand, presents Powers’ article in clean, readable text surrounded by links to other editorial content and reviews on other books (one must scroll down to discover the page’s only ad).

One could argue that the B&N Review has a troubling link to a corporate sponsor, but this argument feels immediately flimsy. Not only is the B&N Review clearly autonomous from Barnesandnoble.com—as Powers’s negative critique of Larson’s bestseller attests (she calls it “frankly ludicrous”)—but the corporate squeeze on The Boston Globe (or at least Boston.com) seems much more obvious and painful. Better a book review run by a corporate bookstore than one meagerly sponsored by Retinal Night Cream. I’m not speaking about the quality of editors or writers at either publication; rather I’m merely noticing a shifting (shifted?) hierarchy. With Barnes and Noble on shaky economic ground itself, one wonders if it will manage to build and sustain its excellent book review. What economic model will provide the best, lasting home for quality literary criticism in the future?