About
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I was a publisher. Today, I still work as an editor and writer. Never shy, I have always believed that you should write honestly about yourself, what you read and, occasionally, what you see.
I am now joining the team of reviewers at the San Francisco and Sacramento Book Reviews
sanfranciscobookreview.com
sacramentobookreview.com
and have started what is intended to become a semi-regular column on trends in publishing and the book trade. Here is the first column:
I have also accepted other books for review purposes — as and when those reviews appear, they will be clearly marked.
As a quick word of explanation, the reviews written for more formal publication are limited in word count and cannot discuss any of the themes or ideas in any detail. I shall continue my more general and idiosyncratic reviews at length on this site. As always, I refuse to pull punches. If I was in a restaurant and was served a bad meal, I would swiftly make everyone aware of my unhappiness. Similarly, I will discuss anything I consider bad in the subject matter for review. But I refuse absolutely to award scores. This is too complicated a calculation for me. Although I could devise a marking scheme whereby I allocate so many marks for the prose or script, construction of the plot, the characterisation and its credibility, and so on, this is all highly subjective and potentially arbitrary. Hence, I will simply explain why I like or dislike any feature of the books, films, television or anime I review. You can draw your own conclusions from that.
If you want to talk about any aspect of this site, my e-mail address is dmar9114@yahoo.com.
