The Washington Post's Ezra Klein Wishes I'd Written a Different Book

What to do when a review isn’t a particularly good review, especially when it is published some place where a lot of people are going to see it? The past few days I’ve been faced with this dilemma over a review of The Walkable City by Ezra Klein, the Washington Post reporter and master blogger, in The Barnes and Noble Review.

Klein, in short, says the book isn’t tough enough. He likes the chapter about Carlsbad, California, and shopping centers, but says that the book doesn't include enough research about questions of urban policy. Nor does he like the conversations I imagine between urban planning icon Jane Jacobs and Baron Georges Eugène Haussmann, who was responsible for rejigging Paris in the mid-19the century (which, by the way, are taken word for word from their writings or interviews, as is noted in the book.)

Well, I’m sorry I didn’t write the book he would have liked to have read, but I wanted to make my book as amusing as possible. I tried to keep the tone light, particularly because the implications are pretty heavy, and I’m convinced that ordinary folk turn off when things are painted in somber colours. Klein and I had a very civilized e-mail/Twitter exchange about this, from which I think we both gathered that we don’t disagree very much.

And there’s a lot to be said about getting even a doubtful review from Barnes and Noble. They haven’t carried my books in numbers in the past, but apparently they are with this one. An old high school friend just wrote that she’d been able to get her local B&N store to order it for her, and I know my publisher did a reprint because of B&N orders.

So maybe the old adage is correct: it doesn’t matter what they say, it’s whether they spell your name right. Check out the review, take a look at the book, and see if you agree. In addition to Barnes and Noble, it’s available at many independent book stores, on Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, and directly from Véhicule Press.