I came to this task as a journalist, not a literateur, and I have remained one to this day. I have high literary standards and delight in the expression of strong opinion, literary and otherwise, but I also read a book as if I were a reporter: looking for what it is “about” in the deepest sense of the word, determining what matters about it and what doesn’t, trying to give the reader a feel for what it is like as well as passing judgment on it.

. . . Furthermore there is the matter of the future of books — and thus of book reviews — in a culture that is evolving as ours is. People constantly ask me about this, as if I knew something, when in truth I know nothing. I have no doubt that books will survive and perhaps even thrive in some form, but as a lover of bound and printed books I am uncomfortable, to say the least, with the rise of e-books, even as I readily acknowledge that they offer exciting new possibilities for transmitting the essential material of books to more readers than traditional books now reach. Still, I love to look at the bookshelves in our apartment and to be reminded by the title of one or another of the pleasures it once gave me and may yet give me again. To the best of my knowledge no one has yet figured out how to offer a similar experience with e-books.

~Jonathan Yardley