some other measure

NO higher commendation can be given any work of the human mind than to praise it for the measure of truth it has achieved; by the same token, to criticize it adversely for its failure in this respect is to treat it with the seriousness that a serious work deserves. Yet, strangely enough, in recent, years, for the first time in Western history, there is a dwindling concern with this criterion of excellence. Books win the plaudits of critics and gain widespread popular attention almost to the extent that they flout the truth - the more outrageously they do so, the better. Many readers, and most particularly those who review current publications, employ other standards for judging, and praising or condemning, the books they read - their novelty, their sensationalism, their seductiveness, their force, and even their power to bemuse or befuddle the mind, but not their truth.

Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book, pp. 165