This year The New York Times Book Review celebrates 125 years of doing just that which its title suggests. During that time, one may imagine it has made and broken enough writers, made many a reader’s heart beat faster, and some to break – over person or product of passion. Enough books lauded, quickly to be relegated to obscurity; some dismissed – or simply missed – now with a place in the realm of classic; but often simply the right words found at the right time – by reviewer and reviewed alike.
There are probably reasons not to have a NYT subscription, but an interactive pieces like this, which in tracing the years of the Book Review also, by the by, passes review on the changing cultural parade of a whole century plus some years more, and Paral Sehgal’s essay “Reviewing the Book Review”, are not amongst them!
There will surely be much more to look forward to during the year as The Review dives into its archives and appraises its history, and considers its role in the complicated literary and cultural present and in the ensuing years.