So here’s a crazy thought – how about using that precious review space to write about a book that doesn’t have a built in audience and thus introduce a new author to your readers? Wow – can you imagine that?

Also, a stronger case for what Ed’s arguing against is Maureen Corrigan’s review of Nora Roberts’ BLACK HILLS. The opening paragraph practically spits out a loogie *and* dashes headlong into constant use of “I”:

“It doesn’t much matter what I say about this new Nora Roberts novel; most of the adult female population of the planet is going to read it anyway. It’s a staggering understatement to say that Roberts is review-proof. There are more than 300 million copies of her books in print, and she’s written 160 bestsellers, 39 of which have debuted at No. 1. So let’s step away from Roberts and her books for a moment and, instead, consider me.”

Then come paragraphs two and three, which is all abouut Maureen, little about the book:

I’m the fall guy here — the stooge who’s been assigned to review “Black Hills” — and whatever I say about Roberts is going to affect me a heck of a lot more than it’s going to affect her. If I pan the novel, I come off as a snooty-pants literature professor, and I’ll be deluged by e-mails from her ticked-off fans. If I gush over it, I’ll be suspected of trying too hard to be just a regular gal, a self-conscious populist, like Sen. John Kerry on the campaign trail back in 2004, ordering a better class of cheese on his Philly cheese steak.

So here I am, caught between a rock and a hard place. Roberts’s feisty heroines are often stuck in this kind of fix at the climax of her tales just before a deus ex machina in the form of Mother Nature or a hunky guy drops in to rescue them. That’s why women read Nora Roberts: to live out vicariously the fantasies that real life doesn’t provide. Well, I’m going to live out a personal fantasy for a moment and pretend that it’s still the Golden Age of Critics: Mencken, Parker, Woollcott, Wilson — witty gatekeepers of culture who said what they thought without fear of the backlash of the booboisie or the demagogy of the Internet.

Finally, finally in paragraph four, do we come to what ought to be the lede: “I’m going to say what I think straight out: “Black Hills” is synthetic mind candy.” And the rest of the review more or less backs it up (although the “booboisie” line was over the top), but did we really need those first three paragraphs? No.

And yet I am torn, because Corrigan clearly was entertaining herself here, which I wholeheartedly endorse. But maybe she’ll have a gander at Ron’s generally sound tweets and change her ways in the future?

From today’s Michiko review: “A year ago it would have been hard to imagine a book about the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department making it onto people’s must-read summer reading lists.”

From Robert Crais’s review of Westlake: “Before Janet Evanovich brought us Stephanie Plum, Don Westlake was the Grand Master of Criminal Laughs with his hilarious novels about professional thief John Dortmunder.”

Honestly, readers are not infants. They were interested in economics before the recession (or does nobody remember last summer’s difficulties?). They know who Janet Evanovich is (and is she really doing what Westlake did with Dortmunder)?

All I’m asking here is for newspapers not to treat their general audiences like nitwits. It doesn’t help that these dull and condescending ledes are seemingly written by people who haven’t laughed since the Carter Administration.