 Reviewing the Words Michelle Kerns recently wrote about the top twenty most annoying book reviwer clichés that seem to be used by all book reviewers when letting the public know about new books they view as worthy of their praise: Gripping The overuse of certain words and phrases is not new. In the course of his infamous 1946 essay, “Confessions of a Book Reviewer,” George Orwell wrote that it was precisely those clichés that repeatedly saved him in his reviewing years. In the morning, blear-eyed, surly and unshaven, he will gaze for an hour or two at a blank sheet of paper until the menacing finger of the clock frightens him into action. Then suddenly he will snap into it. All the stale old phrases — ‘a book that no one should miss’, ‘something memorable on every page’, ‘of special value are the chapters dealing with, etc. etc.’ — will jump into their places like iron filings obeying the magnet, and the review will end up at exactly the right length and with just about three minutes to go. Meanwhile another wad of ill-assorted, unappetizing books will have arrived by post. So it goes on. He goes on to ask what value a word, any word that is used repeatedly and without thought has: “For if one says — and nearly every reviewer says this kind of thing at least once a week — that King Lear is a good play and The Four Just Men is a good thriller, what meaning is there in the word ‘good’?” Oddly (or perhaps not), when I googled “essays on book reviewing” and “book reviewing tips” I came up with a number of sites. Their tips ranged from student basic to sophisticated, but in the thirty or so I checked I never did find any that addressed the issue of clichés. I found that interesting, and perhaps that is part of the problem. During the eight or nine years I have been reviewing books I confess to having used five of the ones listed above. I’m embarrassed to say I have used them repeatedly. It’s hard, as Orwell notes, to avoid them, especially under deadline. Part of the problem is that if you love a book you do tend to use the same phrases. Think about talking to a friend on the phone. “I am loving it,” I’ll exclaim. “It’s fascinating to learn how different yet how similar is the role of the drummer [a traveling salesman] in early twentieth-century fiction as well as real life at that time” or “I am enthralled with Ethan Frome!” In spoken exchanges, the words are not or at least become less of a cliché because they are intimate, and have tone to imbue them with a unique character. In writing, however, they lack the personal inflections of vocal tone and facial expressions. So what do I do when confronted with a book I’d describe as “compelling” in a conversation but do not want to use in a review? Sometimes nothing. If it is exactly the right word, I use it. But I try to do so consciously, to make it a deliberate rather than a lazy choice. And to back up that word with at least one example of why I chose it. It’s that old “show, don’t tell” mantra that is drummed into students’ and writers’ heads until it becomes carved in stone. I am always on the look out for synonyms that are not only fresh (or at least not worn out) but are right. Yet I do confess to falling into the dreaded Cliché Room to describe a book I like. And so it is with the proper amount of embarrassment that I share six of my “favorites”: Fascinating. Though it’s not on the above list, this is probably my most embarrassing favorite book-reviewing cliché. I love this word, or at least my brain does because it seems to come to a full stop at it whenever I need a word for . . . what else, fascinating books. Enthralling is another unfortunate brain-stopper of a word for me. I tend to use this more for fiction than nonfiction, but hey, the truth is I’ll pull it out for any enthralling book. Or even a fascinating one. Gripping. What books have gripped you? And what does being gripped by a book mean anyway? Does it reach out and grab me by the throat? Do I use this because it really means something or because I just like the visual imagery? Poignant. Oh boy, this is a favorite. (Hey, is “favorite” becoming another cliché of mine?) If a book has emotions, this word is sure to pop up into my brain. Compelling. I love this word. I like the way it sounds and feels as well as looks. Like Robert Redford, it has it all! So I will pull this one out for any book I like more than minimally. Riveting is closely related to compelling. In fact, it not only could be but is synonym for it. And another cliché. Powerful has that same “feel” to it as compelling. It rolls off the tongue and out the mouth, um, powerfully. So when I say a book is “powerful” I generally mean it. It is near the top of its class, but that still doesn’t prevent the word from being a book reviewer cliché. So in my attempt to break out of the House of Clichés, I consulted one of my favorite books of all time: Rodale’s Synonym Finder. I’ve owned this now-broken book since about the mid-eighties. I remember buying it from Santa Barbara’s Earthling Bookstore, one of the most famous independent stores, now sadly, closed. At the time I was starting a business and writing the brochure. I was stumped on one word: “fine.” On that single tri-fold it had found its way into the text in no less than twenty places. And I couldn’t think of a synonym that was a good substitute. So off I trudged to the Earthling to look over their selection of thesauri, of which they had quite a few. It took me some time to compare them, but once I began this spectacular book stood out. It didn’t pretend to be a dictionary or to do anything other than to list them alphabetically, note their lexical category, and provide a heady array of synonyms themselves divided into types. (“Cold,” for example, lists ten types of synonyms separated into what I would term brrr words, frozen words, dead words, unconscious words, unfeeling words, heartless words, unfriendly words, down words, boring words, and lightweight words. Of course one just can’t choose a synonym and move on. Well, one could but it wouldn’t be good writing. For me, words have a feel. They always have had. I don’t just have to know the dictionary meaning, though I do that. Rather, I have to sense, to actually feel that the word is right for where I am intending it to go. Is powerful the right word to describe the book, not just a cliché to be slid into place? If a book has produced that immense, can’t-let-it-go feeling over me, what word would exactly describe that? Potent? Strong? Forceful? Dynamic? Substantial? Or even strapping? If I want to do it right, I have to read all the choices, feel the words on my tongue, listen to them resonate in my gut. In other words, it’s not easy to move outside the clichés if it is going to be done right. As for Ms. Kerns’s other book-reviewer clichés, I don’t think I’ve used them. Not even once. And now that I know about them, I don’t think I will. I don’t like several. Tour de force. What the heck does that mean to a particular book, and really, how many books reach that level? Do any of them, really? Readable. That almost sounds like a polite slam, this is a bad book but I had to review it and say something nice so I’ll call it readable. Nope, if it’s only readable it’s not going to get reviewed. I simply could not imagine using “X meets X meets X” because that only means something if the reader has read X and X and X. What if the reader has not? And even if she has, what does that tell you about the book under review? Nothing more than it’s a “kind of this and kind of that” kind of book. I’ll pass on any book with that many ingredients in the review alone. Page-turner. This seems to be applied to books of many pages even though that's not its meaning. Now it seems to me that knowing you want to turn the pages of a long book is a good thing. But of course a reviewer using it means the book is exciting enough to make you lose a night’s sleep. If that’s really the case, why not say so? I would personally be much more inclined to consider a book that promised to make my head fall onto my desk at work the next day because I was up all night finishing it rather than telling me it is a “page-turner.” Ditto with nuanced, haunting, rollicking, timely, sweeping or unflinching. They are all nice words, but that’s all they are. Nice. Not particularly descriptive. Ms. Kerns followed up her list of those annoying words with a fun piece titled “Book Review Bingo” in which she provides eight Bingo cards using her “unfavorite” book reviewer clichés. If you are so inclined you can print them out and use them to track any book reviews you read (including those on BiblioBuffet, though we hope you’ll not be able to fill your card). Why would you or anyone do that? Because her goal, to rid the book review world of “knee-jerk reviewerspeak,” is a good one. If we don’t, she says, “we will lose the hearts and minds of everyone who is even remotely partial to the Great Literary Discussion.” And that outcome is something about which the word powerful would be the best choice. Or would that be poignant? Upcoming Book Festivals: The Pub House: Imaging Books & Reading: Of Interest: This Week . . . Until next week, read well, read often and read on!
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