I've had a literary crush on Dave Eggers for ages. Here's his take on book critics. Check out the comments in that original post for more drama.
Eggers: To enjoy art one needs time, patience, and a generous heart, and criticism is done, by and large, by impatient people who have axes to grind. The worst sort of critics are (analogy coming) butterfly collectors – they chase something, ostensibly out of their search for beauty, then, once they get close, they catch that beautiful something, they kill it, they stick a pin through its abdomen, dissect it and label it. The whole process, I find, is not a happy or healthy one. Someone with his or her own shit figured out, without any emotional problems or bitterness or envy, instead of killing that which he loves, will simply let the goddamn butterfly fly, and instead of capturing and killing it and sticking it in a box, will simply point to it – “Hey everyone, look at that beautiful thing” – hoping everyone else will see the beautiful thing he has seen. Just as no one wants to grow up to be an IRS agent, no one should want to grow up to maliciously dissect books. Are there fair and helpful book critics? Yes, of course. But by and large, the only book reviews that should be trusted are by those who have themselves written books. And the more successful and honored the writer, the less likely that writer is to demolish another writer. Which is further proof that criticism comes from a dark and dank place. What kind of person seeks to bring down another? Doesn’t a normal person, with his own life and goals and work to do, simply let others live? Yes. We all know that to be true.
Apt. 11d 
Yeah that’s a tough one. As an editor in an apparently dying industry (RIP, GOOD staff’s employment) I will say the people who are really good at what they do are often much more about lifting up than tearing down. I kind of agree with Eggers on that.
At the same time I think the best ones do engage at a level where they can examine works’ — not authors’ — weaknesses and if they need to, mildly comment that the Emperor seems to have no clothes.
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But by and large, the only book reviews that should be trusted are by those who have themselves written books.
Oh, please spare me.
I’m certain authors have never liked critics, since the invention of books. So what? There are many, many books in the world which should never have been written. Many have been published by reputable publishers, and many have been written by established authors.
I appreciate honest reviews. I tend to avoid novelists’ reviews of other novelists, because they’re either envious, fawning, or exercises in magnanimity.
“Look, isn’t this beautiful,” doesn’t help the reader. It also doesn’t help the author. I wish this era had a Mencken:
What gives the story distinction is something quite different from the management of the action or the handling of the characters; it is the charm and beauty of the writing. In Fitzgerald‘s first days it seemed almost unimaginable that he could ever show such qualities. His writing, then, was extraordinarily slipshod— at times almost illiterate. He seemed to be devoid of any feeling for the color and savor of words. He could see people clearly and he could devise capital situations, but as writer qua writer he was apparently little more than a bright college boy. The critics of the Republic were” not slow to discern the fact. They praised This Side of Paradise as a story, as a social document, but they were almost unanimous in denouncing it as a piece of writing.
(…)
I make much of this improvement because it is of an order not often witnessed in American writers, and seldom indeed in those who start off with a popular success. The usual progression, indeed, is in the opposite direction. Every year first books of great promise are published—and every year a great deal of stale drivel is printed by the promising authors of year before last. The rewards of literary success in this country are so vast that, when they come early, they are not unnaturally somewhat demoralizing. The average author yields to them readily. Having struck the bull‘s-eye once, he is too proud to learn new tricks. Above all, he is too proud to tackle hard work. The result is a gradual degeneration of whatever talent he had at the beginning. He begins to imitate himself. He peters out.
http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/critics-eng/mencken-gg.html
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It is very rare that I read literary criticism/ book reviews for a book I have actually read. If I plan to read the book, I don’t want it spoiled. If I have already read it, I can form my own opinion and don’t care. I generally read the Lit Crit in the New Yorker for what the critic herself adds, that I wouldn’t have the time or desire to do myself. (“I have read three histories of ancient Rome in the past 6 months, and here how they are different from the histories of Rome that were written during the Cold War. . . “)
If I want a recommendation for an actual book to read, I will look at Amazon suggestions for books I liked, or go to Goodreads.
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I’m aspergery enough that sometimes I have trouble with literature — unable to tell who was bluffing, who was being sarcastic, etc. Usually I turn to book reviews of novels when I genuinely can’t understand some turn of the story and I want someone else to explain it to me and make sense of it. (For example, I was completely mystified by “We’ve got to talk about Kevin”– couldn’t figure out whether or not I was supposed to like the mother). Other amazon readers are also helpful in that regard.
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The worst sort of critics are (analogy coming) butterfly collectors
I’ve never read it, but I’ve always thought that Nabokov’s literary criticism was supposed to be one of his strong points.
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“I’ve never read it, but I’ve always thought that Nabokov’s literary criticism was supposed to be one of his strong points.”
Nice catch. I have read some (a long time ago). He’s interesting, but you can’t trust him 100% because his ego keeps getting in the way. When he’s reading another author, he’s backseat-driving, and he doesn’t appreciate writers’ whose gifts are different than his own. Nabokov most admires proto-Nabokovs. Among his notorious quirks was his violent dislike of Dostoevskii.
(I say this as a Nabokov fan. His Gift (in particular the Chernyshevskii bio embedded in the novel”) is brilliant. I like Pnin too, which is an academic novel set in the US. There’s some very funny stuff there.)
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While a critic may be a vivisectionist, a fellow writer may well be an unfriendly rival, even to a fellow author who has been in the grave a hundred years.
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