The problem with book reviews — past and present — is that they are so narrow and limited in comparison to the number of books offered. In the U.S. alone, more than 50,000 books of all stripes are published every year, but only a very few, and almost only those from larger publishers, get professionally reviewed (i.e., reviewwd by publications like the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, and the New York Review of Books). Contrast this with movies.

The problem with the Amazon-style reviews is that they are not really reviews, they are merely expressions of like and dislike in 50 words or less. A review in the NYRB is not only a review of a book’s qualities or lack there of, but it is also a history lesson and a comparison to other similar works. For example, its recent review of “Abraham Lincoln: A Life” (Michael Burlingame, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) pointed out both the greatness of the work and its flaws and noted the books that address those flaws. A NYRB review is a literary work in itself, worth reading for the information it imparts even if the book is not one of interest or one loses interest in it after reading the review.

The other advantage — at least to me — of a publication like the NYRB is that it exposes me to what is being published — books that I would not otherwise hear about. For example, I often see a title that looks interesting in a NYRB ad and order the book (my most recent order being the books “Why the Drefus Affair Matters” and “Jewish Terrorism in Israel”). Amazon-style reviews rarely lead to such discoveries.

Amazon-style reviews are important because they give a sense of what the average reader thinks of a particular book and the reviews are generally more useful for the mass-appeal tomes. But the further one strays from that type of book, the less useful and valuable such a review is. Amazon-style reviews gain their value when there are numerous reviews of a single book; NYRB reviews are useful and valuable in their own right.

The loss of NYRB-type reviews is simply a reflection of the decrease in reading for the value of reading. Too many “readers” are 1-book-a-year readers who only read mass appeal books and thus want to know that 1,000 people gave 5 stars to the book. It is a sad commentary on the state of education, which hasn’t instilled in younger readers the value of reading to gain knowledge as well as enjoyment.