While I am a proud elitist, I am not a literary snob. As I said last time, it's story that moves me, and if I let myself be limited by books I "should" read or authors who pass some sort of weird smell test, then I'm missing out on parts of the entire reading experience. I don't want to do that, and it perplexes me when other people do.

Don't they know that it's a great big world out there? There is no right way to read. It's so important to remember that.

For years now, I've hated on the Los Angeles Times Book Review (and to a certain degree the New York Times) because I see that my hometown paper simply refuses to acknowledge the diversity that is Los Angeles. The LATBR, largely a reflection of the editor, became a pastiche of California history, Hollywood history, obscure biography, and a smattering of mostly literary fiction.

You could argue that these topics are all worthy of reading and reviewing, but I would argue that these topics lead to the state of the LATBR today: it simply isn't valued by a large enough segment of Los Angeles's reading population. Even before it became the flipside half of the opinion section—making it that much harder to find in morass of ads and special inserts—the LATBR was locals only, in the worst possible sense of the term.

While good writers graced the pages, the overall tone was, shall we say?, stultifying. Maybe it was the subject matter, maybe it was the editorial tone, but there wasn't a sense that reading is fun, books are fun, and we shouldn't have to waste our lives slogging through words that simply don't move us emotionally. Most egregiously, the LATBR failed to understand that readers cross the literary plains with ease—there was no reaching across reading cultures, no real attempt to bring the science fiction reader into a different, but equally speculative type of fiction. No "hey, if you like this, you might like this, too."

Newspapers have absolutely no obligation to cover books, especially when books don't pay the bills. Of course, bills are paid in different ways, and if the book review were valuable to the people of Los Angeles, it would be much harder for the powers-that-be (powers that, I am convinced, have no business running a newspaper) to cut and trim and destroy the LATBR. I don't think it's too harsh to suggest that the editorial staff of the LATBR has a whole lot of culpability when it comes to the state of the book review.

My guess is they don't see it that way. During the past year or so, as more book review sections were cut and eliminated, I noted a lot of hand-wringing, but not a lot of proactive action. "We must save the book review!" they cried, but nobody offered solid, practical plans, a smart course of action. There was a sense of entitlement in some of the discussion, a sense that book reviews are "good for us" and must therefore exist in the print edition of a newspaper.

Like millions of people—more than a few of whom are American—I regularly read the book coverage at the Guardian while no longer bothering the sift through the wasted paper to find the LATBR (and, honestly, sometimes I'd just forget that it was upside-down and backwards from the opinion section). I get what I want from our friends across the pond: lively book coverage, diverse opinion, and passion for reading, writing, and publishing.

Book reviews are somewhat tricky, you see. Some people don't want to possess too much information, so they only read for general gist. Others prefer to read the review after they've read the book because that's where the review is most helpful: comparing and contrasting views and thoughts. And there are those who equate "review" with "analysis", looking for more than a review when they encounter discussion about a particular book.

I think the newspaper book review section killed itself, but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe the model was tired and at the end of its natural life, especially in this age of community and cross-border interaction. Maybe the book review section had to die to give rise to something bigger, better, and, yes, more inclusive: a true literary community. A community that crosses boundaries and lines and social strata. A community that doesn't exist on a publishing timetable. A community that facilitates face-to-face community as much as it does online debate.

A community that loves books—from the moment fingers hit the keyboard (or ink hits the paper) to the moment the reader closes the last page (or turns off the Kindle).

Posted by: Kassia Krozser