The bar keeps getting lower, me thinks.
Susan and I made our fortnightly pilgrimage to our local library yesterday. I had books to return, books to pick up, Susan had books to find.
While she checked through the catalogue, I browsed through the stacks. I rambled, stopping now and again to pull a book down and read the first page, the opening paragraphs, flip a few pages in – sometimes less than a hundred, sometimes more – and read again.
I spent some thirty minutes thus engaged. Probably opened 12-15 books.
Not a single book engaged me.
I selected the books at random. If a selection criteria existed, it existed non-consciously.
Walking out of the library, I said to Susan, “I can’t get over how many books are genuinely poorly written. And these got published?”
You don’t want me to review your book
A publisher sent me a book they’d published. I said upfront that I wouldn’t review it unless I thought it a good book.
I won’t be reviewing it.
I read the first paragraph and stopped. I read it to Susan. She thought it okay. I rewrote it. “Definitely better,” she said.
Basically I took a block of exposition and turned it into dialogue laced with action. Instead of being told what’s going on, the reader gets to hear, see, and feel it happening.
I wanted to contact the publisher. “You really published this book? What you sent me was after editing? What are sales like?”
Continue reading “Readings”
