I am a very heavy reader, but not as heavy as I ought to be. Why this is I am not completely sure. It is now harder for me to read books than it is to read on the Net. The text is smaller in books and blurs out quicker than the text on the Net and this is a real problem. Also I have no reading light at the moment and I really need a good reading light. In fact, I would like 100-300 watts to read by. 60 watts just does not cut it, and with no reading light as I have now, reading is really just not even possible.
Nevertheless, I do read a lot of book reviews for some reason. I also read quite a bit of literary criticism for some other reason. I read more reviews and criticism than actual books for some third reason.
I just recently found this one – The Complete Review- A Literary Salon and Site of Review. I cannot recommend it enough. Everything I always wanted in a book review site.
The Dalkey Archive Press site. They also run a journal called The Review of Contemporary Fiction. The journal is better than great. They used to have a lot of actual book reviews up from the journal but these have all been taken down. They still list the titles of the contents of the journals and even those are pretty fun to read. Apparently all the reviews went down because they are really trying to sell copies of the journals.
They do have some interviews still up and some of what they call casebooks (extensive, whole-journal like reviews of certain books). The casebooks are basically literary criticism and they are very nice. Mostly the Dalkey Archive sells books, for the most part experimental or modernist fiction, though there is also some literary criticism and other nonfiction. There is a very strong emphasis on translated works for foreign countries, especially out of Europe. They have whole series like Norwegian Language Series, Georgian Language Series, etc.
The whole enterprise appears to be a money-losing one, so they are always begging for money in some way or another, which is ok by me.
It is important to get foreign language works translated into English and believe it or not, there is a serious shortage of foreign language books being translated into English. Almost all of the translation going on is out of the US and the UK. The rest of the Anglosphere, especially Ireland an New Zealand, produce almost no English translations of foreign language works.
There are many issues surrounding why there is a lack of foreign language works being translated to English, and the site has links to some excellent studies on the matter. The Dalkey Press is heavily endowed and funded significantly by the culture departments of foreign governments, universities and philanthropic foundations. No one is in this to make money, but capitalist values of profits uber alles are not the only important values in this world.
The London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement (both from the UK), the Village Voice Literary Supplement, the New York Times Book Review section, the New York Review of Books, H-Net (reviews of history books) and the World Literature Today forum have always been excellent.
I would avoid Foreign Affairs due to its rightwing, pro-empire focus. This is a magazine that pretends to be Centrist while being solidly rightwing on foreign policy. But that’s not usual. Finding a mainstream US MSM outlet that ventures from the US Empire’s line on foreign policy is like finding a four leaf clover.