I have been reading books, both fiction and non-fiction, for last four months as per one of my new roles as 'Book Critic' and have encountered both good works and bad ones to no one's surprise as our job pretty much entails that. It's not the good things that have left me dazzled and exalted but the bad ones who have rocked me and left me jittery. Doing a book review is a lonely job if you do it right and there have been incidents when I have found myself very lonely but as they say, it's part and parcel of one reviewer's life and you get to learn either way. So let's come to the point now. Recently, I read two books and in the first one, the main character of the book who goes by the name of Arpan was spelled Apran not once but thrice in space of two pages. Narration was first class and I was enjoying it but 'APRAN' put me off. I could only do away with 65 pages of the book out of a good 267 pages. Then there was another book. It's back cover had a blurb and bio of the author that told me that author was a veteran and one who has traveled the globe extensively. Plot seemed really interesting from the blurb and when I entered it, I found vocabulary, narration and plotting, all exemplary. I mean, this was how a spy-thriller should be written and then I came across a stanza where a person who had to be called as SIR respectfully was addressed as SAR. I thought the person who was addressing our guy might be using his exotic dialect as it was revealed he belonged to a different geography but only in next paragraph, I found him speaking calling our guy SIR again. On the next page, 'insistence' was written as 'instance' and I decided to part ways with the book. I believe both writers and reviewers are present in this group and thus I want to ask one question of each of them. First the authors:
a) If I were to criticize this book and hold one person responsible for these mishaps, who might that be: You or the publishing agency (Editing Team including)?
Now the reviewers:
b) If you find yourself in a similar scenario, would you like to continue with rest of the book? I mean, if your central character is treated in such a humiliating way so early in the book, would you be able to empathize with him or rest of the characters for that matter?
Thank You.
a) If I were to criticize this book and hold one person responsible for these mishaps, who might that be: You or the publishing agency (Editing Team including)?
Now the reviewers:
b) If you find yourself in a similar scenario, would you like to continue with rest of the book? I mean, if your central character is treated in such a humiliating way so early in the book, would you be able to empathize with him or rest of the characters for that matter?
Thank You.
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