Three Percent #45: +1

This week’s podcast features freelance book critic Jacob Silverman, who stirred up a lot of discussion last month when Slate published his piece, Against Enthusiasm about “the epidemic of niceness in online book culture.” Basically, Jacob argued that online book culture has lead away from legit discussion to a series of endorsements and “+1s.” Shortly after he wrote this, William Giraldi trashed Alex Ohlin’s recent publications, setting off another Twitter firestorm. And of course, the day we recorded this, Giraldi published a long piece in The Daily Beast explaining his beliefs about book criticism. Anyway, this week we talk about all of that . . .

And because in today’s crazy world, calling a bad book bad will lose you a Twitter follower, this week’s song is Grounds for Divorce by Wolf Parade.

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