Quote:
Originally Posted by sgoldin
Joe, some of the best reviews ever written were for stinkers. Dorothy Parker made a career of it. "This is not a book to be put aside lightly. It should be thrown, and with great force."
Or, for a play starring Katharine Hepburn: "Miss Hepburn ran the emotional gamut from A to B."
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I'm not a fan of that type of review myself. I try wherever possible to treat the author with respect. Unfortunately, that has a side-effect. If you feel upset with what I've written about your work, that was me trying hard not to be offensive.
I used to be quite casual about slinging mud around when the authors were just names on a cover, but when people submit requests to me for a review there is an undeniable humanity in it that I can't ignore regardless of what the author should or should not expect from me.
It's not practical for me to accept every request or even get into a conversation with every author making a request, but once I've actually chosen to feature an author's work on my site I feel like I should make an effort not to be a total bastard just for a cheap laugh. I'm not interested in becoming a literary drag queen.