Friday, February 26, 2010

Criticising the Critiques

This may be at the top of the Ten Crankiest Things I've Ever Written (or said...)

Without mentioning names or book titles, there are a few authors I have been keeping my eye on. I catch the reviews when they come out, I notice if they have done events, or interviews, etc. etc. etc.

It pains me to say that I have seen a number of reviews that were positive, praises the book(s) and complimented the author, but but but ... Some of the reviews are so poorly written, they almost aren't worth bragging about!!!

Now, I don't mean a typo or a sloppy bit of punctuation (I'm probably guilty of both of those crimes in this very posting). I mean poorly chosen words, repetition, awkwards (or incorrect) sentence structure, spelling mistakes that are not simple typos. And one more time: awkward, clumsy sentence structure, vague word choices, and so on.

Furthermore, I have noticed in many cases the reviewer gets the author's name wrong and/or misspells the name of the main character(s).

I'd like to think that reviewers took pride in their work and that they took the time to revise and proofread and revise again. Sadly, this does not seem to be the case, at least not all the time.

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