Pretty Terrible
Pop Culture Criticism by Natalie Luhrs
From 2004 through 2012, I reviewed over 550 books for the sadly now-defunct RT Book Reviews, almost all science fiction or fantasy. That’s over 125,000 words of criticism in reader-facing space. My reviews have been featured on the covers of books and in promotional materials, under the RT Book Reviews byline.
Since 2012, I have been reviewing books and writing essays here on Pretty Terrible.
Out of the nearly 700 posts and thousands of links and hundreds of hours of research and writing, here are my favorites:
- CGNPCWSW: A Manifesto
- George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into The Sun (2021 Hugo finalist for Best Related Work)
- Funny Money, Patreon Style
- Start-Up Suicide, Patreon Style
- I Read Cal Newport’s Deep Work So You Don’t Have To
- No One Should Feel Alone
- A Brief Analysis of the Locus Recommended Reading List, 2011-2015
- Losing My Voice
- When Self-Help Books Go Horribly Wrong
- Pattern Matching: Lou Antonelli and the Sad Puppies
- WisCon: The Frenkel Decision
- Silence is Complicity
- Dave Truesdale Explains It All
- Gussied Up Criticism (review of Hild)
- Reading Habits and the Status Quo
- Harassment and the Back Channel
- Clean Rooms, Messy Bodies: The Intersection of SF and Romance
- Criticism, Reader Shame, and Problematic Books
- Over the Borderline: More on Genre, Gender, and Reviews
- Reviews, Genre, and Gender
- Sexism, SF, and Me
- Fan Fic Sensibility and the Id Vortex
- Expanding the Boundaries of Romance
- To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein
- Natalie’s Theory of Urban Fantasy
- W.B. Yeats, Nice Guy
- A Reviewer’s Manifesto
Additionally, I’ve published a number of essays elsewhere:
- Uncanny Magazine
- The Bias (which I co-own with Annalee Flower Horne)