REVIEWS AND READERS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sia,—Dare an ordinary library subscriber criticize your method of reviewing fiction ? This week your reviewer spends fifty lines of his two columns in ridiculing a novel which he sums up in the end as " a silly and badly -written book." Why not restrict the review to this one line, and spend the other forty-nine on some books that we can put on our library lists ? His first column is used to give us the plot of a book which is evidently worth reading. Why; then, not let us discover the plot for ourselves ?
Damning-the unreadable must be great fun for the reviewer, and these reviews make good reading in themselves, but they are not much.help to a wretched woman whose family expects her to procure from the library at least one readable novel every day. Will you not, for her benefit, restore your old custom of " shorter notices " ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
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