There I was, sat directly behind the taxi driver, chewing gum, checking goal.com for their preview of who United would play at the weekend..when a pretty young girl sat beside me, baby in hand and all that. As we made our way to school, her baby started crying, when upon a sudden, the mother lifted her blouse, adjusted her bra and started to breastfeed the baby..all in one swift movement. I swallowed hard. Here was a girl, pretty much my age (early nineties), bare breast, very beautiful. Naturally, a full blooded young man is religiously obliged to look, but a more moral voice in your head tells you that's someone's mother's breast you're going to look at. It left me with a decision to make.
When I finish a book review, I leave it in my room; untouched, unedited -- and go out for a walk. On these walks, I wrestle with some serious doubt. Is it right for some guy to sit there and critique a book that someone laboriously wrote? Is it right to make a living off of someone else's book..just because you can write!
I no go lie you, a proper critique will say what the author/director did wrong, things he did right, the believability of the work, historical accuracy, stuff that could be improved upon..all these will be found in a review, but its not always in equal measure. At the most, you get in a few lines about what's good about the book/movie...then you coin lovely little phrases about what's wrong about the work.
The negative is what people look out for. That is certainly worthy of criticism, but then you would be criticizing human nature. There are probably thrice as many synonyms for bad as there are for good. But these things have to be done, as when one reads a compendium of reviews and you evaluate the negatives pointed out by those critics, you can then weigh the pros and the cons and decide if the work is worthy of your time.
That's when I make the decision that I'm not doing something bad by critiquing a work. Then I go back home to edit, and post.
*phew* Weight off my shoulders! Thanks for listening..
--->>>Cue (I seriously tried not to look. I really did!!)
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