[sillyfluke]

I like to encourage extensive use of quotes whenever I see them in book reviews, and at least this author makes a little effort to provide some. It often annoys me to no end when I read long book reviews with very little quotes from the actual book. Like, where is the evidence of this amazing writing.

I understand that for some books specific quotes don't quite get across what makes the book great. But in those cases I expect the author to address that characteristic directly, and make an effort to try to explain why the book is great despite not being very quotable. And by quotes I mean quotes that can span an entire page if need be.

The only exceptions to this that I'm inclined to allow is when your descriptive writing skill is at such a pro level that the review itself is a piece of art. But most "professional" book reviewers are not even at that pro level frankly.

An example of actual "pro level" would be this Martin Amis line from one of his reviews:

"You can stir a vat of molasses with James Wood's Chekhov boner." (I'm recalling the line from memory)

[pavlov]

Long quotes are problematic from a copyright point of view, especially because different countries have different interpretations of what may be called "right to quote" or "fair use".