Yesterday I felt like my world tipped upside down.  The American Book Review came out with their list of 40 Bad Books and a 3-year-old reviewed Where the Wild Things Are on the New Yorker‘s Book Bench.  Upside-down, you ask?  Well, yes.  Because I agreed wholeheartedly with Zachary, the kid critic, and felt my stomach turn a bit at the critique of American books that I love (by university professors no less)!  At least Zachary was honest in his telling of Maurice Sendak‘s tale.  The professors?  Could barely define why they thought a book was bad!  Or rather, they defined it… but nobody ever taught me that bad meant “failing to fully open multiple new worlds” or “failing to live up to expectations” or “arrogance” (although I have been told that being arrogant is not necessarily a good thing…). 

So I was even more surprised to see that these “bad” books were some that I consider great (and many others as well!): The Great Gatsby, Revolutionary Road, and the New York Times‘ book of the year Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.  It all seemed a bit snobbish to me, to take down these beloved titles because of their own supposedly snobbish qualities.  The definition of “bad” itself was inconsistent.  As Carolyn Kellogg pointed out over at the LA Times‘ Jacket Copy blog, “If there is any constant, it’s that the best books that appear on their worst-book list are subject to the most unreasonable critiques.”

Well, now I no longer wonder why people panic about the future of the review.  Because now it seems very dark to me.

(Sorry, that was dark of me. There are still many amazing reviewers and publications out there.  I’m just so disappointed in this “40” list.)