"Mario Puzo's intriguing novel eschews the lyrical as the author instead crafts a poignant tale of family life and muses on the compelling doings of the Mob." That line contains seven words which the editors of New York Times think appears in book reviews regularly.
Like all professions book reviewing has a lingo. Out of laziness, haste or a misguided effort to sound "literary," reviewers use some words with startling predictability. Each of these seven entries is a perfectly good word (well, maybe not eschew), but they crop up in book reviews with wearying regularity. To little avail, admonitions abound. "The best critics," Follett writes, "are those who use the plainest words and who make their taste rational by describing actions rather than by reporting or imputing feelings."[Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing]