The lines below were posted on the Readerswrite Page today. I decided to feature them on the main blogspace here, because they were just too richly entertaining to pass up. The lines are posted in italics immediately below, and the comments in normal font following the italicized quoted lines are by me.–AKB
“Hi, Ashok.
“Found this on a blog and am 4warding them to you as I know you like to post reader reviews on your website.
“These are excerpts from a review posted by “American Reader” who also claims to be “a famous blogger, an editor of some repute, and hopeless convention addict.”
- After my first World Fantasy I attempted to read all of the books that came in the free book bag. I was young, what can I say? One of the books was Prince of Ayodhya by Ashok K. Banker. I put it down after about 6 chapters…
Had I gone further, I might have been able to really get in to this book. But I have a rule about novels. I only give the author 6 - 10 chapters to hook me. If I am not hooked by then, I stop. Mainly because I have so many books I want to read…
If I knew the original work, or if this were based on some epic I was more familiar with, I might have sat still for something like this.
Perhaps I am just too impatient, though.
Around this time I joined a mailing list of people I knew from the OWW and other related spheres. One of our members asked the group if she could invite Ashok in. They’d met during a con and shared a publisher (possibly an editor?) and she felt he’d fit in with us. We said yes, and I giggled behind my hand a little since I had been a bit WTF about him just a few weeks before. At the time, no one read my blog, anyway. He certainly hadn’t. Life went on.
“As the reviewer admits to not reading beyond six chapters of PoA, viz. a fraction of the whole six-book ramayana series by yourself, over 3,000 pages if i’m not mistaken, i think its only fitting to quote just a bit of the review too, don’t you agree?”
Not really sure what to make of this.
No idea who the “American reader” in question might be and there wasn’t a link to the blog where the review purportedly appeared either.
Also, the person who posted this to the Readerswrite Page did so anonymously, so am not sure if it’s meant to be a joke.
Assuming it’s not, and the review is real, well, not sure how to react to it except to grin and shrug.
Does any blogger actually describe themselves as a “famous blogger”?
And “an editor of some repute” sounds odd too.
The one thing that’s evident is that the person named “American Reader” (if that’s the name), has quite an ego!
I know some really famous bloggers, and editors of considerable repute, and none of them tomtom their fame as bloggers nor their reputation as editors in quite so many words–that’s because, anyone who’s really famous or ‘of repute’ doesn’t need to spell it out.
But that’s just an observation on the reviewer.
The review itself seems more like the typically inane blog-post by someone with five minutes to kill and a blog-space to fill than a real review.
Six chapters of Prince of Ayodhya? And that’s enough to review a 600-page book that’s only the first part of a 6-volume series which tells a single story?
Well, I suppose you could review a book based on six chapters, but the question is, why would you want to? I mean, if you read only the first few pages of a book and didn’t like it enough to continue reading to the end, let alone pick up the remaining five books in the series, why bother with reviewing it at all?
Each to his own, I guess. Or her own, as the case may be.
There’s also that puzzling mention in one para of having met or corresponded with me personally.
I don’t know what mailing list the “American Reader” is referring to, or who the person is that’s being referenced there, but I can say this with certainty: I’ve never attended a “con” (by which I presume American Reader means “convention”–a literary convention of some sort) in my life. And since I don’t possess a passport yet, I’ve never travelled outside India either! Besides, I’ve no idea who this person is with whom I apparently share an editor or a publisher–the implication is that its a friend of mine, and I definitely don’t know any person with whom I share an editor or publisher.
Anyway, I thought about it for a day and then decided to post the whole absurd kaboodle here (instead of on the Readerswrite Page) as further evidence of how American reviewers, can be…well, just plain weird!
Five years ago, when I got attacked by some “American” reviewers, it was mainly for not being American and not writing cookie-cutter American fantasy.
There’s this common misconception among American readers and reviewers that any “foreign” author can only be seeking to make it big in the big beautiful world of American publishing. Why else would any author in the world write a book otherwise?
When I see a review like that, I just shrug and turn the page–or click on to the next review, as the case may be.
Sometimes, if the person is being rabid without any apparent provocation, just mouthing off about me personally (as this one seems to be doing) or generally attacking without any real justification–I mean, come on, six chapters?–I just look at it, go “what the heck is this person talking about?” and toss it on the top of the growing pile of reader reviews…
15,463 and still counting. The vast majority of them so touching, I’m constantly amazed at how many different ways people find to praise the same book/s.
And the mercifully rare nutcases like this one provide some comic relief. So I thought I’d share it with you, in the spirit of, there goes another American weirdo…
It takes all kinds to make up the world, right? Even “American readers”. “Famous bloggers”. And an “editor of some repute”.
:~)
