Next thing you know, people on the internet will be using the internet for the intended purpose of the internet, OH NOES

Lev Grossman--who is, like, some important guy, or something--says:

At the risk -- nay, certainty -- of sounding kind of snobbish, I wish book sections in general would leave book-reviewing to the pros. There's a pervasive notion that anybody who can read can write a book review. Not so. Good god, there is nothing so boring, so dank and unappealing on the page, as a bad book review.

I'd reply at length, but my brain made like a finely-tuned wave crashing against the immovable rocky shore of the last sentence's stupidity; it done well broke on that shit. (I mean, come on. Things that, on a page, would be more boring, dank, and/or unappealing include high school poetry, wet caves, feces, and many professional book reviews. And I'm not even trying.)

I shall, instead, pretty much command you who are interested in this subject to go read Bud Parr's excellent break-down of the book review and response landscape. Teaser ahead!

Having defined a book review we have to acknowledge that what most people are doing, amateurs and professionals alike, are just writing about books, plain and simple. Whether or not there really is a "pervasive notion that anybody who can read can write a book review" is questionable. The truth is that writing itself stands on its own in this world of amateurism; a review by an amateur will not be read because the writer sits comfortably behind the reputation of a newspaper, but because it's smartly written and interesting; the crème de la crème shall, to mix a metaphor, rise on its own.

(And lest I seem like I hate Lev, note that the sentence that follows in that interview the ones I quoted above is "And at the risk of sounding reverse-snobbish, I'd like to see more serious review attention go to genre fiction," which, well, okay, you can't hate a guy who says things like that. Even if he is a big stupid jerk.)