…a publisher makes.
I picked up a book by an author I who’s written well over a dozen books I have read with appreciation and enjoyment, and, on reflection, that have proven to be edifying. I picked up another book by this author just this week and began reading it. It is, as I have come to expect, well-written and as most of the other works have done, it evokes both current events and historical and cultural references aplenty, inspiring me to make connections and draw parallells that are instructive.
But. What a difference an editor/publisher makes. This book wasn’t published by the same firm as all the other books I’ve read from this author. Little things: multiple “then” for “than” errors. “…[N]either ‘X’ nor I is…” (?!? AM, dear reader, AM; I’d even stretch a point and allow “are”–though that’s just not right) and other such usage and grammatical errors that are the result of a quick mind introducing typos and grammatical errors through the process of getting a story down as it flows… that should have been caught by the editor, but were not.
Every time I run across one of these things, it’s like the meme of a turd in the punchbowl cropping up. *blech!* Or like saying “President Obama” now that I have permanently etched in my memory the image of his “situpon” facing me in the picture of him bowing and scraping to the Chief Saudi Thug, Abdullah.
These things ought not to be. Not in an otherwise well-written and thought-provoking book. (To which I must now return. Along about page 500, things have started heating up… Only another 280 or so pages to go before I inevitably learn that my “fear” that this is just the first of a trilogy–or more–is fact. Oh, please don’t throw me in dat briar patch! *heh* )
The attentive reader will notice that I
1. Did not mention who the author is
2. The name of the book I’m referring to or
3. The character for whose name I substituted “X” above.
That was, obviously, by design.