I began my writing life several decades ago as a book reviewer, but I’ve largely kicked the habit. It isn’t that reviewing isn’t important or interesting; it is a vital democratic conversation about books, journalism, ideas, and imagination. As a young aspiring writer I fell into it easily, maybe too easily. But after reviewing a few score volumes as I have tried to do -- carefully, generously, critically -- one tends to get a bit of genre fatigue. One tires of praising and of scolding. And having written a couple of books myself, and seen them (fairly and unfairly) praised and scolded, the urge to judge others diminishes even further.