And when I hear the word cheese, I reach for my knife. Mmm, artisanally spoiled milk…

On topic, I think it’s a shame the newspapers are dying, but when the New York Times Book Review appoints Sam Tanenhaus as its editor that seems more like a self-inflicted wound.
With the power of Google, I fixed your link – JQ

I consider that my selection and editing of the quotations is added intellectual content but I may be fooling myself.

Shurely some mistake?

But meanwhile in the world of the day to day, commerce keeps art sharp and to the point and the nouveau riche still aspire to that old odd mix of vulgar honesty and good taste that makes popular art and entertainment pretty interesting. Art and commerce feed off each other in conflict. To argue otherwise is to miss the point—-

“I don’t think I’ve ever read a book based on a newspaper review,”

This country isn’t known for its newspapers.

Does that mean it should be written by middle-aged and/or elderly man that act like bratty
kids?

By that standard Lee Siegel is the ideal!

(and worst of all are those damn precocious kid bloggers—they’ve matured much too fast!)

On what basis do you select your books then? Do you read according to a literary canon or does one thing lead to another? What about contemporary fiction, I’d be totally lost without critics.

As for myself and to be brutally honest, I generally enjoy reading reviews a lot more than reading the actual books – saves a lot of time too. Needless to say that, when I was studying CompLit, I belonged to the theory faction.

Hmmm, good question. Insofar as Against the Machine may be the first book that (a) inveighs against nasty pseudonymous comments on the Internet (among other things) and (b) was written by someone whose career was derailed by the nasty pseudonymous comments he’d posted on the Internet in effusive praise of his own writing, it might be legitimately considered a “breakthrough” book after all.

So you were joking about its being a “breakthrough book”? It’s sometimes hard to know when you’re tongue-in-cheek, Michael.

I’ve been a reader for 35 years and I can recall only one occasion on which I was prompted to read a book I wouldn’t otherwise have looked at based on a review. Am I unusual in this? Do others rely on reviews to help them select what they read? Do people have favorite trusted reviewers?

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book based on a newspaper review, but I’ve read countless books on the basis of a write-up in the LRB or NYRB, and many on the recommendation of blogs.