An installment from the Kvetching Editor:

The great thing about working for a newspaper is that there's lots and lots of free stuff. It was this way in college, too, of course. Books and CDs came in as promotional material or for reviews. Writers, artists, anyone who has something to promote ships their goods off to the newspaper and after it is written about or reviewed, the items typically are kept, put in the newspaper's library or put out for taking by folks from sections that don't do reviewing. This is great, except for one thing.

Most of the books are advance copies. ADVANCE copies. That means they're STUFFED with errors. Not just poorly placed commas, but misspelled or wrongly placed words. I know I shouldn't complain, but damn. As a copy editor, books are blessings but advance books are curses. When I'm reading a text and find a bounty of errors, it kills the mood.

It's like passionately kissing your lover only to have his or her dog come up and lick you on the face. It just kills the mood!

But I read on. Especially this Holocaust in Arab lands book I picked up. Absolutely fascinating. It's sort of making me hate on the French, though. It's also keeping me from reading other books I've started. Fully submerged, I can't focus on anything of the other books in my possession.