Is there still enough room for writing about reading?

A recent post on Quillblog, the daily postings from the trade magazine Quill & Quire points out that the much-talked-about contraction of book review sections and book reviewers in newspapers may simply result from a shift in the way that people talk, and write, about books. Certainly there are more books being published and retailed now than ever before. What's hard to figure out is whether there is a crisis in reading? Or a crisis in writing about reading? Or is there no crisis at all?

Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post writes that where once there were 12 standalone book sections in U.S. newspapers, now there are five, and laments about "America's Death March towards Illiteracy". Novelist Michael Connolly writes in the New York Times that newspapers are making short-sighted cuts, abandoning a longstanding belief in the symbiosis of newspapers and books, reviews and buying, reading and...reading.

Staff book review editors are as endangered a species as staff cartoonists. Newspaper publishers are cutting back perceived non-essentials such as book reviews because they don't bring in the revenue they once did because book publishers are putting what little promotional money they have not into newpaper advertising but point-of-purchase and retail display. Which is all very well as long as people know about the books and come to the stores to find them.

We are fortunate that Canada still has a number of sources devoted to book reviews (Literary Review of Canada and Books in Canada) plus Globe Books as a standalone book section. And many of Canada's small circulation literaries do reviews as a matter of course. But let's not get smug. There was a time when book reviews in newspapers seemed as immutable as grocery ads.

At the same time, there is a blizzard of commentary online in blogs and elsewhere about reading and books, which is where the energy is going, perhaps. However, as National Book Critics Circle president John Freeman says, “We have a lot of opinions in our world. What we need is more mediation and reflection, which is why newspapers and literary journals are so important.”