Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews Column Editor: Corey Seeman (Director, Kresge Library Services, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan) <cseeman@umich.edu> Visit him at https://www.squirreldude.com/ Column Editor’s Note: We often find ourselves dealing with products, services, people, performances with labels such as the best or the worst. In reviews, we often find that problem as people build up and pull down all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. While I would not be likely to have ever run across the very best or the very worst of just about anything, I believe I have discovered the most useless review ever. Please bear with me. Recently, I wrote a blog entry on the values of reviews.1 Too often there is way too value to really consider it a worthwhile addition to your knowledge of anything. I was reminded of a review I saw when buying a gas grill back in 2017. I was on the Sears site (that is how old that purchase was) when I saw this review: “Still in the box — I purchased the grill to use when the weather got a bit warmer. Through the month of January it was too cold. We were gone for three weeks in February. Hope to get it out of the box and assemble it in March. It is in the garage acting as a table for miscellaneous objects. I expect it to work well upon assembly.” The reviewer “Valued” gave it one star out of five.
The name should have been “Idiot.” How can you review something you did not use. FWIW, how was the box acting as a table for miscellaneous objects? That would have been at least worth another star. I did buy the grill and it was quite good. I believe it worked better once you took it out and assembled it. Surprising how that works. Such is the way with book reviews. We really need to go through the work to have an understanding of what the benefits and drawbacks are. Practically, no book is the best. Practically, no book is the worst. They just live in the middle with the rest of us. Luckily, we have a great set of reviewers who actually look through the content and make an assessment based on the content! Speaking of which, I very much appreciate the work of the reviewers who really dig into the work and provide context that may be missing elsewhere. Thank you to my reviewers for this issue: Kelly Denzer (Davidson College), Sandra Yvette Desjardins (Texas A&M-Central Texas), Carolyn Filippelli (University
of Arkansas – Fort Smith), Peter Hesseldenz (University of Kentucky), and Katherine Swart (Calvin University). As always, I want to thank them for bringing this column together. If you would like to be a reviewer for Against the Grain, please write me at <cseeman@umich.edu>. If you are a publisher and have a book you would like to see reviewed in a future column, please also write me directly. You can also find out more about the Reader’s Roundup here (new site name) — https://www.squirreldude.com/atg-readers-roundup. Happy reading and be nutty! — Corey
“Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics,” part of Bloomsbury Philosophy Library, Bloomsbury Digital Resources. Contact Bloomsbury Publishing for trial or pricing information (https://www.bloomsbury.com/). Reviewed by Kelly Denzer (Collections Strategist and Discovery Librarian, Davidson College, Davidson, NC.) <kedenzer@davidson.edu> “Bloomsbury Contemporary Aesthetics” is a collection on the Bloomsbury Philosophy Library platform. The tagline associated with the collection is “discover new ways of thinking about art and the everyday,” and that is indeed what I found with this collection of resources. The content includes case studies, primary texts and scholarly monographs, an image gallery and videos, and critical readings on global topics around traditional aesthetic theories. The collection contains diverse artworks and images, all with philosophical questions to engage students in deeper classroom discussions or as launching points for research papers. Exploration of the items within the collection can begin at many different points. Content is organized by material type, subject, period, people, and by Movements and Schools of Thought such as Post-Structuralism, Hegelianism, or Ordinary Language Philosophy. Starting with these broad categories offers the option to further filter by period, people, subjects, etc. to narrow down the results.
Eastern Grey Squirrel at Waterfront Park in Charleston, SC on May 23, 2023. When you are in town for the Charleston Conference – be sure to take some time with the squirrel friends!
38 Against the Grain / November 2023
The eBooks included in the collection include primary texts from publishers such as Princeton and Yale university presses, and Bloomsbury publishing imprints make up the secondary literature. Each eBook landing page contains a summary and a hyperlinked table of contents to bring the reader directly to the chapter or, alternatively, to go directly to a page number. A researcher can also search within the book for specific words or phrases. Each chapter includes a full citation
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