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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

More Thoughts on Book Reviews: The Art of Fielding

It seemed like a perfect book. Baseball, but literary fiction. High praises from every single reviewer. The New York Times review was long, intriguing, and included the phrase: slow, precious and altogether excellent first novel.

A baseball book that really wasn't about baseball.

So last night when I finally finished all my Required Reading (6 YA/Middle grade novels for review, 2 grown-up Southern books), I grabbed my Kindle (at over 500 words, The Art of Fielding seemed like the perfect e-book).

I read two sample chapters and liked it. I was poised to hit the "buy" button, but it was quite late and the book's still $12.99. Buy or wait? I scrolled through the 40+ reader reviews.

Okay. I know I've come close to blasting reader reviews on this very blog. But these were not only mostly articulate, they were signed! And almost all really slammed the pre-pub hype surrounding this novel.

I decided to wait. Maybe give it a try from the library. Anybody else read The Art of Fielding?
And I wonder if a lot of those reader reviews were from disappointed baseball fans. I suspect this book is about a whole lot more than sports.
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1 comment:

  1. MoeOctober 28, 2011 at 4:18 PM

    Halfway through I decided I wasn't enjoying it enough to continue. Then I had a change of heart and decided to keep going. I'm not sure I'm glad I did. I felt that the author had set up all these characters, some in highly implausible situations, and as he approached 400 pages, he had no idea what to do with them, so I felt it was "messy."

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