Jennifer Howard

Well, kids, the Chronicle launched its new website last week, and the old links to my Chron stories don’t work any more. I have asked our tech folks whether the problem is likely to go away (ha!)—whether, in other words, those old URLs will eventually redirect readers to archived stories on the new site. I may have to go through and change the links by hand, though. If you’re looking for a story of mine in the meantime, please drop me a line and I will send you a working URL. [Insert platitude about technology making life harder.] UPDATE 7/31/09:… Read more...

An abridged version for those who don’t want to wade through the chatty one below: 1. Read the book. All of it. 2. Be honest. Say what you think and why. 3. Do not hide behind vagueness and cliche. 4. Resist the temptation to be mean just because you can. 5. Remember that the author is a human being who (we hope) put a lot into this book. 6. Be entertaining. Dullness is unforgivable. 7. Don’t spoil the surprise. 8. Think twice before you accept an assignment. 9. Do not kid yourself that a review is the equal of a… Read more...

I don’t write many reviews these days. Ten years at Book World gave me my fill, and it was time to focus on on other kinds of writing. That’s been a happy decision, but I still read a lot of reviews (and write them once in a while), and I still find the push-and-pull between writers and critics a fascinating thing to watch. The recent bad behavior from Alice Hoffman and Alain de Botton made me think again about how that game’s played, or should be. So I came up with a code. (Authors need some guidelines too, as Hoffman… Read more...

It’s been a bad week for author-critic relations. First Alice Hoffman used Twitter to get back at a reviewer who made the mistake of not entirely loving her latest novel. Then Alain de Botton went after Caleb Crain—in the comments section of Crain’s blog—for not entirely loving his latest opus in a review for the NYT. (At least give de Botton points for drama: “You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review.”) I love a good literary smackdown as… Read more...