Why review books at all?

I'm having second (and third . . . and fourth) thoughts about my recent comments on Time of the Flies. I rarely write a negative review. Why not? It raises a number of additional questions. Why review at all? What is the point?

I regularly read reviews in the Sunday New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. Most of these are generally positive although authors and readers of The New York Review essay reviews will reject a reviewer's argument. It can lead to a lively debate, but rarely does a reviewer advise avoiding a book entirely.

Neither the Book Review nor The New Yorker have the space (or. I guess, inclination) to publish an extensive back and forth between reviewer and author. Nor do they publish many negative reviews and when they do I always wonder why. With space so precious, why use it to tell readers what they shouldn't read? Tell us what's good.

Given the number of books published—more than 250,000 in the US annually—it would be impossible to note even a tiny fraction. The New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" column touches only 200 fiction and non-fiction books in a year, four an issue. 

I don't know why others review, probably for standard reasons: for money, for academic recognition, because it's a job. I review to discover what I think about the book, what I learned from it, to explore why it gave me pleasure, to share my enthusiasm. It's certainly not a job; it won't give me academic recognition; and, alas, it's not for money.

I regret what I wrote Time of the Flies. I should not have written anything at all. Read it. It has interesting things to say about women and women's lives in Argentina. I'll do better with experience.