Profile: Peter Stothard

       In The bionic book worm in The Independent Nick Clark profiles Times Literary Supplement editor and 2012 Man Booker Prize chair of judges Peter Stothard.
       The saddest sentence, about judging the Man Booker:

"It was hard work. In a normal year, you might read 20 novels. So to read 145 in seven months is an unnatural act," he says. "But it's an important unnatural act because in a way literary criticism is an unnatural act. It is work, a technique, a skill."

       Twenty novels in a normal ... year ? That's what the editor of a major book review publication thinks ? Sure, I doubt the clearly fiction-averse Sam Tanenhaus manages that many, but I had higher hopes regarding Stothard. (I don't know what 'you' Stothard is talking about, but if I don't read twenty novels a month I have excruciating withdrawal symptoms.)
       He'll probably also get some flak for this -- even though he also notes that: ""It is wonderful that there are so many blogs and websites devoted to books" --:

The rise of blogging has proved particularly worrying, he says. "Eventually that will be to the detriment of literature. It will be bad for readers; as much as one would like to think that many bloggers opinions are as good as others. It just ain't so. People will be encouraged to buy and read books that are no good, the good will be overwhelmed, and we'll be worse off. There are some important issues here."

       I note that many print publications have encouraged people to buy and read crap for centuries -- and that in the case of weblogs and many book-review sites it is actually easier to tell whether the reviewer(s) share(s) the taste of the (prospective) reader: for example, with my reviews all conveniently collected here, readers can easily check my opinion of books they have also read and see whether I'm on their wavelength (and hence possibly trustworthy, in this regard) or not.