Book report

So the IFBC has finished one book, and we are busy reading the next. But I’m still thinking about our reviews and how we expressed our opinions—frankly I’m sitting here wondering how to go about saying what I liked and didn’t like without turning the discussion into a slam of someone else’s taste in books.

Let me explain.

I took a grad level essay writing class as an undergraduate, and I was one of maybe three undergrads in the class. The rest were all on the Ph.D. trail; most took the class for fun. We read several collections of essays, discussed the essays themselves thoroughly and also talked about the forms essays took. Don’t ask me to recall any of that, because I took the class 10 years ago and don’t remember.

What I do remember is that we wrote essays all the time and we all got reviewed at least once that semester by the class. Those reviews were brutal, but not for the reasons I expected. I thought we’d be critiquing the writing style and offering suggestions for improving the form of the essay but nope, that’s not what happened at all. Instead the class generally tore apart the idea of the essay and did so viciously. That seemed like dirty pool to me and really inappropriate but that’s what happened.

I’m not saying we tore apart Lemming personally over her book. But I think I need to find a better way to share what I liked and didn’t like without veering into something that may be interpreted as a personal slam.