Reviewing books, there's a thankless task, no-one will like you for it. Authors will usually clench up and get all defensive, brooding and tending grudges in perpetuity. It's a small world, and most book reviewers are also authors, who usually only do it because they need the money. They really need the money. So they get dirty and the rest of us stay clean. Because we need someone to do it for us, as we can't always rely on word of mouth.
Our friends can't always do it for us. Often as not they have different tastes in books, or may not like books at all. They do incomprehensible things like riding horses or watching telly or surfing or getting married or playing video games. There's a line in a Turin Brakes song: '...my friends are all junkies / but they're still my friends...' It's like that. That saying: 'you can choose your friends but not your enemies': nonsense, it's much more the other way about. And why would you want to choose your friends, anyway? Might as well presume to choose your parents. Your friends happen and they happen to you and you think about them and sometimes you worry about them and you look forward to seeing them and you're happy when you do, usually, and that's how it is. Isn't it?
How did I get onto this subject? Book reviews. Thought I'd something more to say about that before I got distracted, but perhaps not.
Words, from a mostly metrocentric perspective. See Metrocentricity for pictures.
22 March 2008
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