Hmm. Charlie is heading off to Austin for Armadillocon which, no doubt, will be a terrific event. Posting about it, he addresses his concerns about visiting the USofA at all. What an intimidating place it has become to visit, or travel through, and how threatening it’s legal environment now seems to foreign travelers.

This is something I’ve been feeling for some time now. I’m guessing since 2003 I’ve felt the US is a more threatening destination, somewhere to feel mildly anxious about visiting. I’ve been going there to attend conventions and to see Charles and the gang in Oakland, and I have family by marriage that I need to see in New York, so I want to go. Can I see a time when, possibly, I’ll refuse to travel there? Yes. Can I see a time when I’ll choose to only attend non-US World Conventions and World Fantasy Conventions? Yes. And it makes me profoundly sad. I’ve spent more than two years traveling in, visiting, living in or whatever the US. I want to go there, but I want to feel safe and to keep my family safe far more.

It apparently started with Caitlin Kiernan, who rightly suggested that using the term ‘self-indulgent’ was not a very useful one for book reviewers or critics to be using. It then showed up at The Mumpsimus, and I’ve just read Niall Harrison’s interesting comments on the subject.

It’s all good stuff, and I was particularly interested to see Niall refer to conversations on bad habits that reviewers pick up, phrases they use, things they do. I completely agree about not simply writing blurbs, however nice it is to see what you’ve written printed on the cover of a book. I have countless things I hate seeing in book reviews, and a number of flags that fly when I’m trying to write one. For example, if you ever find yourself snickering at your own wit while writing a book review, junk what made you laugh. Trust me. The one thing, though, that I’d cut out of all book reviewing isn’t ‘self-indulgent’, it’s ‘what it means to be human’. As in, Charles Stross’s Accelerando redefines what it means to be human, or Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn addresses what it means to be human. It’s lazy. It’s dumb. It’s shorthand for attempting to describe what a book is about it, or what the author is attempting. Every time I read it in someone else’s reviews, I switch off, and when I read it in one of my own, I wince. Erg.