From “Confessions of a Book Reviewer,” in the new collection All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays, by George Orwell ( Harcourt, $25 ) :

Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be, “This book is worthless,” while the truth about the reviewer’s own reaction would probably be: “This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to.”