If a normal person is asked whether he or she has read a certain book, the response can be a simple “yes” or “no.” For a journalist (i.e., not a normal person), there’s a wonderfully cynical rejoinder: “Read it? I haven’t even reviewed it!” Also: “Well, I’ve read in it.” I was reminded of this upon learning the writer Florence King had died last week. In a National Review column from 1999 (“The Misanthrope’s Column,” which she shared with my colleague Andrew Ferguson), King dispenses invaluable advice on how best to review a book.

Actually, King first explains how she turned down an academic institution’s invitation for her to teach a class on how to go about this. Naturally, she never studied how to review a book—she just reviewed. And reviewed and reviewed. Her fear is that the “Educationists,” if they had their druthers, would love to have “licensed graduates of Advanced Book Reviewing, Book Reviewing Dynamics, Book Reviewing Resources, Book Reviewing: An Overview, and no book reviewers.”