I believe it is possible to read and enjoy book reviews and critiques without having read the book itself, as I believe books and reviews about fictitious books (O, Libertine recently featured in Cedar's post here; more interesting to me, Sartor Resartus and Broges' derivations on the idea, 1 ) so I say go to, readers of hubski, go to.
Seems like the audiobook I had skipped this one! I agree with your comment, depending on the review. For a few of the essays, I could easily get the point without having actually read the books he referred to. But then for one, Wittgenstein's Mistress, he referred repeatedly to the use of atomistic / boolean logic in the style of writing. Though that's the sort of style that I can imagine examples of, it was impossible for me to imagine those examples done well, and for a whole book. Nor could I actually decide whether I agreed with his judgements on different aspects of the book, such as the ultimate failings of the male author trying to write a female protagonist in a way that fully depicted her as a person, rather than accidentally objectifying her / rendering her helpless through an inability to 100% empathize with her existence. Still, I'll take a look at your link some time this weekend. I've only read The Brothers Karamazov by the author, but it definitely was a pretty full book, so hopefully gives me enough background here...