I don't want to add to the sorrow and misery in this world

A reader of this blog commented on a recent post and I responded but want to elaborate a little bit here. I get no pleasure out of writing negative riffs on what I'm reading, though all writers have to concede that it's easier to write a take-down review than it is to write a rave, not sure why that is except in a sense a great book or story is its own entity and therefore hard to convey in words other than its own whereas a weak book or story is inevitably derivative and therefore easier to fault it in comparison w/ other achievements. Every book or story I read I hope to enjoy, but I'm very often disappointed, sometimes right off and sometimes after considerable investment in the work. My goal in these posts is certainly not to add to the already abundant store of sorrow and misery in this world, and I know how hard it is for authors to confront a negative or a vitriolic review of their work. I've experienced that, and I have thought that, should I ever publish again, I will not read reviews - kind of a shame as some of them can teach us and improve our work. I would rather write no take-downs at all - but on the other hand the purpose of this blog, read by so few, is to keep for myself and my friends a record of my daily thoughts about what I'm reading, so I try to be honest within the bounds of civility. I realize that a novel is a life's worth of investment and to knock down the accomplishment in one paragraph or post is mean and absurd - yet on the other hand, novels once published are out there for public discourse and potential readers have some right to fair warning. Finally, very often the fault in contemporary fiction gone bad is not solely that of the author. Many novels I've come across are bad but "fixable" - if only an agent or an editor had stepped up and been willing to work with the author to make his or her work better before publication. The days of Maxwell Perkins, however, are long gone - now it's take it or leave it, and a bit of a mystery why some are taken, others not.