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The NYT book review is everything book criticism shouldn't be

The Review is famous as an arbiter of taste and quality. But the publication utterly fails to seriously engage with books and the publishing industry.

The long article notes that Trump, who presented himself as a real estate magnate, had ditched his “flashy haberdashery” for more conservative “dark suits, white shirts, subdued ties and loafers.” Then, as now, the Times provided a seal of approval to an aspiring entrepreneur busily taking his family name out of Queens into Manhattan, where the newspaper’s imprimatur was one more step towards entrance into the elite(s) of New York. Bich Minh Nguyen’s 2007 memoir, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, is about growing up as a Vietnamese refugee and the now-standard “torn between two cultures” experience that included a version of the Bento Box story: an immigrant child is mocked for their food and… you can fill in the rest because this trope became so ubiquitous that it is now dismissed as clichéd. A 2006 C-Span interview with its employees featured editors talking about the seemingly complicated processes that bring it to life, but the Review to date has no explanation for why a “best-selling” author like Miranda July might receive the attention of no fewer than three separate print pieces (invaluable real estate) and a podcast devoted to her latest book, All Fours, while independent publishers and debut writers struggle to get their copies seen.

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