markk

So I recorded another interview for my podcast today (my third this week) and while there was nearly an hour delay while we worked out how to connect on Skype it went pretty well. Interview over I was wrapping things up when the author asked me for a favor, which was to review her book on Amazon. After a bit of dissembling, I agreed to do this.

The dissembling was necessary because I didn't want to tell her that I didn't want to review it because I don't know if I can wrote an especially positive review of her book.

It's not that it's necessarily a bad book, because I've read worse. It's just that it could have been so much better than the meandering overview of its subject I found it. Now, though, I agreed to write a review that is expected to be positive (she point-blank asked me not to review it if it wasn't, and while I could have taken that particular escape hatch I didn't have it in me to do so with the author on the other line), which means writing a review that is both honest and positive at the same time. It's not impossible (and I don't intend to damn by faint praise), but it will probably not involve discussing some important aspects of the book. I just hope that anyone who buys my book because of it doesn't get so annoyed as to ask me for a refund!