Saturday 21 April 2012

Reviews

It's extremely difficult to be objective about a review of one's own book - especially if it's less than complimentary! But the modern habit of allowing unqualified and untrained readers to air their prejudices (either way) results in what can only be called a skewed distribution. Relatives and friends will review a book uncritically. Others welcome the power it gives to shoot an author down in flames. Still worse, words like 'brilliant', 'fantastic', 'boring', 'futile' are used with no qualification whatever. Surely a proper assessment mentions both negative and positive aspects of a work, and comments fully on both before coming to a balanced conclusion? But being able to do this requires great skill, knowledge and experience. So isn't it time reviewing books was put back into the hands of those who are qualified for the job?

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