The temerity to write a review

A posting by Sharon Wheeler on Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room has me so stirred up that I think I will sit on this for just a little while to let the blood cool.
Titled Amateurs and Professionals, it's redolent of the old argument that only trained journalists can write.
Now it's probably not directed at me, but like Samson into the lions den, or Boadicea against the Romans, I feel I can't let this go by.
So after work tonight, I'll be back to take up the cudgels again.
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Well, here I am again and still simmering.

Here are some selected bits from Sharon's posting:
To be brutally honest, the standard of online reviewing isn't great – and I reckon there are two reasons for that. One is that old amateur/professional divide..... But the problem with reviewing is that every bugger thinks they can do it. .....I've learned by bitter experience not to bother reading most of what people call reviews on the discussion lists or blogs, because they're not – they're barely adequate summaries... the 'fan' reviewer. A number of these appear to have cosy little niches where authors send them books and they post the 'reviews' on lists or blogs. Because they've had the book direct from the author, most appear to feel they can't then be honest, which renders the review almost useless.

Well, let me lay my cards on the table. A journalist I am not. I have been reading books though for well over 5 decades, and writing about them in some way for nearly all that time. I'm an amateur who's been reading crime fiction for approximately 45 years, brought up on a diet of classics in first of all in the traditional sense and then in crime fiction, honed by a university major in English literature followed by decades of teaching English. I know what I like and I'm not afraid to say what I don't like.

You may look at my 2008 list over in the right margin, and think that I am not very critical. You'll see a couple over there that I really didn't like (right down the bottom), but you see there's a process of selective discrimination that goes on before I even read a book. I generally read, and then tell people about, books that I enjoy. However I do write about all the books that I've read, and it is very rare that I don't finish a book.

That said, I don't see it as my role in life to harpoon authors with cruel words to discourage them from ever writing again. Hopefully Sharon had people other than me in mind when she wrote her post. But I'm defending all those amateurs who post their mini-reviews in their blogs in good faith. Many of them serve their purpose well, help them to clarify their ideas about the book, and at the same time, give the reader a clear indication of whether they will enjoy the book or not. And yes, like me, they are amateurs, not earning a living by their writing. That doesn't make their opinions any less valid.

An editor tried to harpoon me recently by contacting me by email, so perhaps I'm still feeling a bit tender. She criticised a review I posted, one of those at the bottom of my list, telling me I obviously couldn't recognise a cosy when I read one. I deleted her email and now I wish I hadn't. I'm not sure what I would have done with it though.

And I don't mean this posting to be a personal vendetta. I am arguing with the idea, not the person. As well as being a blogger on Hey, There's A Dead Guy in the Living Room, Sharon Wheeler is the editor of Reviewing The Evidence, where a phalanx of professionals and amateurs keeps us up to date with the latest in crime fiction, with candid and well written reviews.