What spurred this post? Well I just got informed that a book review I did is going to get published. This is great news...to see your own words reproduced in an academic journal...But there is a catch: I did not like the book. But with what right can I, a lowly first second year PhD researcher, say that professor XYZ, is offering us work that is sort of interesting, but somehow falls flat and is ultimately lacking fresh ideas?
The way that I approach book reviews is that I imagine myself parting with 80 odd pound to buy the book under review. 80 pound is a lot of money, so the book must be quite good. It must be so good that maybe I'll put in the vicinity of my Dostoyevsky or my Bukowski. If the book is not up to par with the aforementioned authors then I start thinking what else I could do with 80 pound. The way I see it my duty is to let people know what their 80 pound is going to get them.
But then again there is no such thing as a bad academic book.
Everyone that has written something, has truly worked on it, poured soul in it. These people are not some grade c journos writing about the latest modulations of a starlet’s waistline... They write things that genuinely concern them. They wholeheartedly believe that society will benefit from what they write...and in most cases it will. In simple words they know their stuff. If there is disagreement it can only be on a level of ontological position and not on validity.
So how come I didn't like what I read. First cue is that it was a collection. Collections are always hard to do. You inevitably get the feeling that a big chunk of their content was something that the author had lying around and adapted it to fit the collection:
-Hey we're putting out a collection on occult porn...
-Great I have a piece on Robosex...I 'll just stick some pentagrams and an evil tempered RoboGoat in.
Now this is not bad in itself, I am not one to put Robosex down, but the problem is that once you get more than half the book screaming "adapted to fit", it starts to make you feel a bit let down...You want your occult porn and not some Robosmut with a pentagram sticker obviously added at the last moment.
Then another problem is that collection means that there is a common theme. Usually there is a leading theorist that everyone must refer to. So let's say you get 8-10 chapters, repeating what that leading theorist said...by chapter three you'll want to kill yourself and the leading theorist.
But then again collections do offer breadth. You get reports on research from Mexico to Slovenia in one place. You get orthodox Marxists, sharing covers with Neoliberals...When they are successfully combined, or at the rare cases where two ends that never meet agree, than it is all worth it.
Ultimately, I judge a collection on its weakest link...and in the case of the book I reviewed there were two links that made me particularly angry: First instance I was faced with propaganda masked as academic analysis. There was this chapter ex-halting the virtues of camaraderie in the Greek creative sector, and the collectives that have formed blah blah blah. Did the analyst bother to even hint to the international audience that the book was addressed, what sort of bureaucracy and taxation running a business in modern day Greece means? In my mind the level and most importantly the nature of this kind of state intervention, ultimately leads to one not being able to put his or her name under their work. In short you can't really do business in the open... And this, especially when we are dealing with creatives, is devastating to one's psyche. How would the authors of the chapter feel if someone else signed their work? Not particularly happy I am sure... Ok the fact that the said chapter angered me did not bear highly on the book review. This is something that the editors could not have known about...
Which brings us to weak link number two: ...Ok this is your work, this is what you do, this is what you find exciting...You write about it in journals, people know what to expect. You have your niche...All is well, but you're in a book...Someone will pay an amount of money that can temporarily make one feel like they are in their 20s again if invested in the proper outlets. It is 2018 and we get research insights on the virtual world of Second Life...Anything that makes us feel like we're 20 again is a good thing...If the research in itself feels like it is 20 years old then it is a very very bad thing...There is research that actually is centuries old yet it feels new...That was not the case.
So, there you have it...an even handed mixed review. Which translates to not good enough.... Which in turn makes me want to apologise to the authors, (bar the two that dragged the volume down to the wait for the paperback category). But what can you do: when in Rome do as the Romans, hence I want bang for my buck. Quite a sad state of affairs really.