My husband has a favorite baseball player, my son has a favorite cartoon character, and I have a favorite book reviewer - Laura Miller. She might not be on a cereal box, or have a line of action figures, but watch out! Book nerds have been stealthily commandeering the lunch table, in case you haven't noticed. Al Gore almost became President. NPR geeks Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris do Letterman and Meghan Daum was profiled in The New York Times "Sunday Styles" section. I even caught Dave Eggers in Page Six! Meanwhile, the real celebrities sweat over what to put down for that ubiquitous "On The Nightstand" question in every interview - because people are watching. Everyone wants a piece of nerd pie.
So maybe she will be an E: True Story. Makes no difference, because I know that she'll keep reading books. She's serious about them. I have a limited amount of discretionary time - when I grab a book, it has to do something for me. I can't suffer throwaways, so I trust Miller to steer me. I follow her lead and she hasn't failed me yet. She wrote a wonderfully insightful piece on Oprah's influence on the book world - in the wake of literary snob-genuis Jonathan Franzen's slam - and it was an assessment that a true book nerd would make. In essence, maybe the Oprah selections aren't all literary brilliance but she's selling a lot of books - "the community of book lovers ought to be a big tent, and there's room enough for both of us".
Laura Miller has a librarian's soft but academically-pitched voice (salon audio) and a New Yorker's no-nonsense economy. Her writing is simple, thoughtful, substantial. Don't get me wrong - I love that sassy, hit-me-with-your-best-metaphor stuff, but Miller takes her books very seriously. And I really love that. You get the sense, sometimes, that she's only writing so she can get more books - it brings a tear to my eye. Her reviews betray her impatience with sub par writing and are generous with sincere praise of the good stuff - and not just celebrity writer-gazing. Consider her review of the relatively little known John Crowley's The Translator:
"Crowley has a small but devoted readership for his unusual fiction,
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