What You’ll Find Here
Welcome to the Lakefront Review of Books! As I noted in the About page, this Substack takes up where my old blog – which I suspended back in December 2022 – left off. Since I’m still living within walking distance of Lake Michigan, I’m keeping the word “lakefront” in the title. It’s nice to have some continuity.
Here are some of the things you can expect to find here:
Book reviews. These will form the lion’s share of what I write on this site. The following general principles of reviewing will apply:
A focus on books that I feel are unjustly overlooked, or that just happen to be interesting for obscure or quirky reasons. That said, I will throw in the occasional classic or well-known contemporary work, just for variety.
Fiction (mostly novels) will be the main thing, but expect to find some nonfiction from time to time.
An emphasis on re-reading. Most of the works under review will be ones that I have read more than once. As Karl Kraus said: “You must read all writers twice, the good and the bad. You will recognize the former and unmask the latter.”
A personal, impressionistic approach. Beyond the necessity of respecting facts and basic logic, I’m going to tread a subjective path. This isn’t Publishers Weekly or the New York Times Book Review. Thus, you won’t find extensive plot summaries here (in the Internet age, those are easy enough to find) or the checklist approach that reviews of new books traditionally take.
Finally, I will disregard the above principles whenever I feel like it. This is my space – I make the rules, so there’s no penalty for breaking them!
Besides book reviews, I also plan to write essays on various subjects. Some of these essays will have some connection to my own creative work. Yes, this will be self-promotion, which is something that virtually all authors have to do nowadays. But I hope it will be interesting and fun to read anyway.
Meanwhile, watch for the first book reviews to start appearing soon!
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