SffMeta - Metacritic for Science Fiction.
posted by Artw on Dec 20, 2009 - 40 comments

The Millions, online since 2003, is a book blog of exceptional breadth and depth, and "an independent literature and culture publication that pays its writers." Until recently, that breadth and depth was hard to fathom, as the site had outgrown its infrastructure. Now, however, its excellent features are easy to find, as are series like The Future of the Book, Ask a Book Question, and The Millions Interview. Superb reviews can be found as they happen or in the Book Review Index, and, a vestige of when The Millions was a one man operation, you can find out what C. Max Magee, founder of The Millions, is reading on the Book Lists page. [more inside]
posted by ocherdraco on Aug 20, 2009 - 12 comments

The Second Pass is an exclusively online publication devoted to reviews, essays, and blog posts about books new and old. It is updated every weekday. [via]
posted by sciurus on Mar 12, 2009 - 7 comments

The Neglected Books Page
posted by anastasiav on Dec 5, 2008 - 13 comments

If you've never heard of Adam Cadre, then Adam Cadre is the best internet writer you've never heard of. He's a novelist and interactive fiction (a.k.a. "text adventure") author, but his site is packed with some of the clearest, most entertaining (and most personal) cultural writing around. It's a blog-esque sort of deal with posts prompted by films, books and other. Choicest articles include a to-the-point takedown of Stranger in a Strange Land, thoughts on Lanark and trolls who have never known love, an exegesis of the virtues of The Sweet Hereafter and the story of his near-lifelong relationship with Cosmos.
posted by colinmarshall on Oct 16, 2008 - 21 comments

Bookmarks Magazine has long been one of my favorite book review periodicals because it aggregates and summarizes reviews from many sources, for example: The Children of Húrin. Recently they have opened up the back-issue archive to non-subscribers. [more inside]
posted by stbalbach on Apr 20, 2008 - 6 comments

POD-dy Mouth - a blog reviewing the best of print-on-demand (self-published) books: "finding needles, discarding hay". Also with commentary on the industry itself, and great snark (1, 2). Take her quiz: can you spot the POD excerpts from the traditionally published? (Answers here.)
posted by Melinika on Aug 12, 2006 - 9 comments

"This book isn't as good as Harry Potter in MY opinion, and no one can refute me. Tastes are relative!" A review of Orwell's 1984 on Amazon, from a list compiled by Matthew Baldwin at The Morning News with a selection of the funniest one-star reviews of books from Time's list of the 100 best novels.
posted by funambulist on Oct 23, 2005 - 99 comments

The Spaghetti Book Club offers book reviews by kids for kids, searchable in a variety of ways. (And most of the reviews are also illustrated by the kid-authors!). One of my favorites begins: "Do you like bad ideas or thinking about them? Well, if you like bad ideas then you should read The Book of Bad Ideas. The Book of Bad Ideas is a book that has bad ideas you really shouldn't try at home. If you try them you'll be soooorrrrryyyyy! If you want to learn more about it, I'll suggest a website but I don't know any. Maybe you should read the book."
posted by taz on Mar 3, 2005 - 6 comments

BooksWeLike collaborative book recommendations. This site was mentioned in passing in a recent MeFi thread and in this Salon article, but it deserves a moment in the spotlight of its own. A beta, it may have yet to realize its full potential in terms of features and performance, but the more people join and recommend books, the more interesting and useful the recommendations will be. It also offers links to Amazon, indie booksellers, and maybe even your local library.
posted by matildaben on Feb 16, 2005 - 3 comments

Metacritic Books. Metacritic has been covering reviews for movies, music, and games for years, but now has started aggregating books reviews, with about 150 books so far.
posted by driveler on Jan 3, 2005 - 13 comments

You're all dummies and you're reading it wrong! Anne Rice's latest book has gotten some crummy reviews on Amazon, and she's seriously POed that the "outrageous stupidity" of the proles allowed to review on the site are tarnishing one of her her editor-free "virtuoso performance(s)." (Scroll down to Anne Obrien Rice- guaranteed real name by Amazon, and feel free to compare this rant to the one on her official website.)
posted by headspace on Sep 20, 2004 - 82 comments

Critique Magazine's On Writing III - Each year, Critique Magazine's staff compiles essays by and interviews with writers, teachers, and translators of merit for inclusion in the special anniversary edition "On Writing".

Basically, a shitload of authors provide thoughts on, ahem, writing. {Both sites are worth a look, imo.}
posted by dobbs on Sep 15, 2004 - 18 comments

"First, look up the most popular and critically-acclaimed books, movies, and music on Amazon. Click on 'Customer Reviews,' and sort them by 'Lowest Rating First'..." The Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game.
posted by reklaw on Jul 2, 2004 - 48 comments

The Pastiche of a Presidency, Imitating a Life, in 957 Pages This is a very bad review of the Clinton book, soon to be released. My question: why has the New York Times placed a book review on its front page? Would they have done this if the book were given a good review? Is the "paper of record" making a clear-cut statement about its feelings about Clinton? Has any other book review made the front page of the NY Times? I for one plan to read the book. I recall that Edmund Wilson once said: always stick to primary sources rather relying upon what some scholar or reviewer has to say about a book. Finally, Clinton is out of office (alas). How much longer will small and jealous puppies chase after The Big Dog?
posted by Postroad on Jun 20, 2004 - 33 comments

In the new LRB, a pretty good attempt to answer the pressing question - why do the Bush people want to attack Iraq so much?
posted by Mocata on Sep 25, 2002 - 20 comments

I'ma write a little letter, gonna mail it to my local DJ... Don't bother they're writing their own. Books, rather, but writing just the same. If, like me, you can remember when the radio was a magic box full of surprises rather than boredom, you'll want to read IndyWeek's reveiws of these two books by disc jockey's:college and pirate radio stalwart Jesse Walker and Richard Neer of the legendary WNEW-FM in NYC, the station that ignited my love affair with rock and roll(I still harbor pipedreams of hosting a show with Scott Muni.) These tomes may be partially exercises in nostalgia, but they may also hold clues on how to recapture what radio once was.
posted by jonmc on Feb 27, 2002 - 10 comments

Book-A-Minute SF/F--- Their "minute" is so spot-on a review for those books I've read that I'm off to find some books I haven't, just on this site's odd say-so.
posted by realjanetkagan on Feb 17, 2002 - 15 comments

Read what Newt does. Or not. Newt Gingrich offers his book reviews on Amazon. Who knows, maybe he is saving up his associates fees for a barbecue grill.
posted by machaus on Aug 29, 2001 - 2 comments

Five five-star reviews on Amazon for G. Bruce Knecht’s The Proving Ground, about the tragic 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race. Of coarse it helps if you're a personal friend of Jeff Bezos. Does anyone seriously believe Jeff Bezos's review was honestly rated "18 out of 18 - helpful" by customers?
posted by swipe66 on Jun 20, 2001 - 19 comments

Fun to be Clueless Literati in the L.A. area will no doubt like this take on the odd tastes of the Times Book Review section. For the rest of us, there's the fun of watching one paper try and stick it to another. Also, and interesting take on the role books play as a medium in this media-rich age.
posted by jasonsmall on Mar 8, 2001 - 5 comments

I'm something of a bibliophile; at age 17 I have a personal library of over 600 books and I read about 120 books every year. One of the cool things I discovered on the 'net last year was the growing number of personal book review sites. A couple of my favorites are John Regehr's Book Pages and Danny Yee's Book Reviews. Both sites provide literate, enjoyable commentary on a wide-range of books. Assignment: Anybody else out there found any good book review sites? If so, please share and explain. :)
posted by hanseugene on Jan 25, 2001 - 29 comments

If this doesn't get some arguments going, then I'd hate to think what would.
posted by Mocata on Jul 12, 2000 - 8 comments

If you've ever read Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, you must read this mock review of it here, called Understanding Understanding Comics. I heard that Scott's such a great sport, he even helped out with some of the writing.
posted by mathowie on Jan 19, 2000 - 0 comments