Every once in a while I might pull my
finger out and try to do a ‘proper’ review, but for the most it would be wrong
to expect that what I write will be fair, constructive, or even relevant. I won
a book in a competition once, but aside from that I paid my own money for
everything here* and as such my obligations to the authors and publishers were
done and dusted when I handed over my cash.
I won’t go out of my way to trash stuff,
because life’s too short to read shit books. You can take it as read (ha!) that I found some aspect of every book I write about appealing or diverting because if I didn't I’d have just stopped reading it, and if I didn’t finish it I won’t write about it. That said, if I think the most
interesting thing about a book was one of its flaws then that’s what I’ll be
writing about. You are, of course, equally at liberty to disagree.
*Apart from the presents and loans, of course. And Project Guttenberg.
Update: It turns out that the above is no longer entirely true. I’m not soliciting anything but have, on very rare occasions, been given books gratis with the obvious implication that it would be nice if I wrote a bit about them here. I know, me neither. But still, not paying my own money for stuff does alter the ethical balance slightly. In these instances I’ll note it in the post labels and probably won’t be as willfully obtuse with regards to either subject matter or reasoning: I shall make at least a token effort to justify what I think. If that means they end up looking like school reports then you’ve no-one to blame but yourselves.
