I have resisted writing reviews of the books I read and the films I watch for literal decades (plural!) now and I’ve just figured out why.
It is not a good reason.
It is because in my mind to review a text is to pass judgement on it, and while I have a healthy respect for my own intuition, I like to reserve the right to change my mind about almost anything upon a compelling argument to do so. I’ve been convinced to find virtue in a great many thing that I initially disliked.
So the idea that I, in my vacuum life, will have some valuable perspective upon my first encounter with a text that can stand the test of time seems silly. I’d hate to write something that I might be ashamed of later.
But
But
But if I don’t call it a “review”?
If I call it a “response”? If I’m merely recording what my own interaction with the text was like? If I’m not saying that the text definitively is or is not worthy? My encounter with the text and how I understood it is much less loaded with judgement, and much more…. observable. I could do that.
A Poet Is Somebody 