An interesting piece

(the confessions of a compulsive reader, which of course caught my attention) by Lauren Baratz-Logsted over at MoorishGirl. It includes this very sensible observation: "When I first started reviewing books, I read every word, just as I had compulsively read every word of every book I'd read up to that point in my life. But somewhere into my 292-book reviewing career with [Publishers Weekly], I discovered something: if I could tell by page five that a book was not going to be to my taste, that I would in fact hate it, the resulting review was about as nasty as it could get. After all, I'd suffered. Why, then, would there be any grace left in me? So I learned, in those cases, to skim judiciously. And I discovered that I could still review a book both descriptively and analytically, and yet the resulting review was fairer, because I was no longer bitter. There was no longer a need for me to be cruel and I cannot help but think the world a better place with a little less cruelty."