& then there were none

The Washington Post Book World section is being shuttered, with book reviews to be spread into the Style and Outlook sections on Sunday for a net 25% reduction in coverage.

Since the Washington Post Book World covered genre fiction on a regular basis which the NY Times does not (well, mysteries up the gazoo but not sf/fantasy) this is not a happy making time.

In fact, overall page for page Book World had far more reviews of interest than the NY Times Book Review, which I often flip through without finding a single review of interest to me.  This is not a new thing, by the way.  It's been that way for all 30 years I've been reading the Times Book Review.

So to me, for all practical purposes, the US is now left with 0 stand-alone book sections I'd care to read.  The SF Chronicle still hangs on with one, but the SF Chronicle is otherwise a rag like most papers in the US have become in recent years, so who cares about that.

Further, the Washington Post "made" Elizabeth Moon's SPEED OF DARK by giving it a feature review in the Book World section, and was probably along with the Times the only paper that could have done so.  With all due respect to SF Site and Sci Fi Chick and Pat's and all the other internet review sites  I pay attention to, there isn't anything on the internet and probably not even any combination or aggregation of all the everythings in the world of internet review sites that can compensate.