I cut my teeth as a writer by doing book reviews, mostly of nonfiction works. It was both enjoyable and, in hindsight, a good idea. My book-reviewing days are now over, for multiple reasons. I’ve moved on, first to writing books and then to essays. I value cultural criticism in all its forms but didn’t particularly enjoy criticizing bad writing or bad books; and my aversion was compounded by a particularly bad, and unfair, review of one of my own books. Writers are like that.