For many years I have saying:
“If you have a lot of time, read newspapers.
If you have less time, read magazines.
And if you don’t have time read books.”
This is something that I learned from professor Robert K. Merton.
In 1978 I was in Columbia University (New York) as a Ford Foundation Post Doctoral Fellow working at the Joseph Pulitzer School of Journalism, and one of the best memories of this sabbatical year were the weekly seminars of prof. Merton.
The 1998 seminar was on How to write a book review.
What a great time!
I started my carrier as a journalist in Barcelona doing a movie review for TeleXpress, one night that the editor asked me to substitute an ill film critic.
Well, I did my best, but the movie was so bad that my first review was the last: I was so negative and hard that the editor said: “no more”
Later I started to do book reviews working in Madrid for a features news agency and I had the pleasure to get dozens of books, select a few of them and write short and direct reviews: subject, style and why in my opinion the book was good or bad, following the advice of prof. Merton that sometimes the best review of a bad book was just to say: “XXX… wrote this book. Why?”
So, this is something that I miss a lot, and i want to do it again in this blog.
This time I am going to try to review only the books that I like and I am reading.
Your own comments will be welcomed to these ultra brief reviews.
And here it’s the first one.
I just read Victor Sebestyen’s REVOLUTION 1989: The Fall of the Soviet Empire.
Why?
Because after a recent trip to Budapest, I read his Twelve Days, the best account of the 19556 Hungarian uprising, and I loved it!
He is a journalist, and writes very, very well.
Short chapters, great quotes, magnificent portraits, and a compelling way to explain complex issues.
It was The Economist’s History Book of the year, and as they said:
“Sobestyen’s book should become the standard work on the Revolution. Deft portraits of major characters… bring the human drama alive.”
Amen.