Never Again

I learned a very important lesson today...

Never request a book from Early Reviewers from Library Thing.

I haven't been a part of LT for very long, but one of my favorite things about it was the Early Reviewers section. This is where authors can give away copies of their books to members in hopes of getting (good) reviews. Every month I dutifully checked the available books and only requested ones that I thought I would truly enjoy. But, since there are only a few copies of each book and usually 100-1000 members requesting each book, it was unlikely that I would ever receive an early reviewers copy.

Fast forward (or rewind) to February where I snagged a copy of Who Really Goes to Hell written by David Rudel. I was very honored to receive a copy and tried to read it quickly yet thoroughly so I could post comments about the book like you are supposed to. Unfortunately it took me awhile to get through the book. . .partly my fault (er, Felicities fault) but I am going to lay most of the blame with the editor. I have been reading for at least 22 years of my life. . .maybe longer, but I don't have much memory of reading before the age of 6 - and I have been able to read countless books in a matter of days. This includes my boring college reads that center on molecular sciences. This particular book took me a month and a half to get through. And when I was finally finished I posted a comment about the book that said something along the lines of "the author obviously knew what he was talking about, but he should have found a better editor to keep him on track". Ok, that is the gross, condensed version of what I really said. But all in all, it wasn't a horrible review.

I log onto my Library Thing account today to find a comment on my person page from the author who was disappointed that I didn't use the discussion forum to help me get through the book. Why the hell would I go on-line to read a discussion forum to help me get through a book? The book is supposed to have all of the data in it - it is not a supplement to something else! What if, when god wrote the bible, that he said: while reading this text, please go to Jerusalem and turn over a red stone in the middle of center square and pull out a scroll which will give you better insight into my mind. Do you think that we would have a Hebrew God? Ok, there are crazy people out there who will do just about anything, but the religion wouldn't be very popular.

I was actually very disappointed myself about the author's book and the comment he left. I spent the first 20 years of life in Christian schools and going to church on Sundays and Wednesdays. I was hoping to read someone else's thoughts about a topic that I spent a lot of time learning about and an immense amount of energy un-learning about. And, it made me a bit uneasy to get a comment from the author like that. I would have preferred him say nothing at all to "I'm disappointed. . ."

The whole process creeped me out a little bit and I refuse to request any more books from the Early Reviewers. I will, however, keep pulling books out of the free bin at the paid book store. At least there no one will be disappointed in my own opinions about something!