The Hardest Part in Reading

The more I read books lately, the more disappointed I become in parts of the publishing world.

I know that just about everyone talks of the Twilight Saga books, and some people consider them a work of art.  I saw many errors in those books.  The timeline was a bit off, there were multiple grammar errors, and can you say "Thesaurus?"  Goodness gracious!  The vocabulary in those books alone was egregious!  (See what I did there? I know how to use one too!)  Who knew teenagers knew what those words meant, let alone knew how to use them?

Most people began with the movies and know nothing of the books, but they really should read them.  The story in the books is much better.  You lose a lot in the movies which, looking back, could be a good thing for some chapters.  The movies did not do the books justice. The timeline in the movies was worse than that in print form.  Catherine Hardwicke's Twilight started the movie in the wrong month to begin with, and she added a warped situation that was never even mentioned in any of the books or Meyers' Midnight Sun.

And now...

There are writers out there doing the Self-publishing trip, but they really should have an excellent editor looking over their work.  They make me want to red-pen every mistake I find. There are missing words, grammar mistakes, word usage errors, point-of-view issues...I could go on, but won't. I don't like to point authors/writers out, that's not what this is about, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to find any book without errors in editing.

This is a story about sacrifice...
death... love... freedom.
This is a story about forever.

A part of me is wanting to take the current book I have, Sempre, and do a little red-penning.  It isn't nearly as bad as some of the others I've read, but there are a few errors here and there.  Sadly, I read this book in another form (fanfiction) before it was published, and I believe I liked it more then than I do now.  It was changed from a first person perspective--I understand why that was done--but you can see the writer's struggle with the transition.

The story itself is a good one; original in concept, good plot and good character development. The flow of the story is done well considering the amount of perspectives the author has to include, but the errors in the edit are unmistakeable.  I am hanging in there though, because I really do like this storyline.

Errors in editing bother me, probably more than they should, but I can't help but get frustrated when I come upon one.  It's not something I want to see in a published work--commercially or self-published.

If the errors in edits were just one or two here and there, okay, maybe I could let it go, but when we're talking roughly about three errors per chapter, things get a bit crazy.  It takes everything in me, not to pull my hair out.  I hate reading the same thing multiple times to try to figure out what the line is supposed to mean.  This is why it takes me so long to finish some of these books.

If I can really get into a book and enjoy myself, I can get through it in one to three days.  I have, at times, found myself taking over one week to get through a book.  Most say you should trade the book if it's taking you that long to read, but when you really want to see where the characters are going, you can't help but read on.

One such book, that I desperately tried to get through...Fifty Shades of Grey.  I cannot help but mention the trilogy because it drives me insane that it is getting so much hype.  Even HOLLYWOOD HYPE!  The wonderful thing is, I don't have to say much about it, because someone else out there felt about it the same way I do.  So, instead of giving my review or spoiling it for anyone on my blog, I shall just give you the link here.  Yes, there are spoilers in that blogger's review.  I don't particularly like her comments about James Cameron, but she is right about the book itself.

I can tell you that the sequels for Fifty Shades of Grey, don't improve upon the mistakes of the first.  They too were self-published and a former fan-fiction, but the storyline here lacks...feeling.  Much of the interaction between characters seemed robotic to me.  The book really didn't change much from its original form. I tolerated it as a fanfic because I had a few friends wanting to discuss it.  I didn't care for it then, and I don't particularly care for it now either.

Scarier still is that Vintage Books, a division of Random House Publishing, has picked up the trilogy and will continue to publish the pack.  One can only hope that they get an editor to fix the gross amount of errors, considering this statement comes from their website:

Vintage Books is the website for Vintage Publishing, a division of Random House which focuses on publishing quality literary fiction and non-fiction.

I'll keep my fingers crossed for all those future readers out there.

I have works of my own, but I would hope that I would be smart enough to be sure that all the edits were complete before I published.  I would also hope that if a publisher agreed to take on my little stories, that they'd take the time to be sure that it was edited properly.  Who knows, maybe there is no more room for that type of a profession.  If not, Lord help the art of language for it is dying just as quickly as it is being used.

My next book to read is Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  I want to read it before I see the movie.  The movie looks VERY interesting.

UPDATE: Because I wasn't very clear...you should read Sempre and blow off the Fifty Shades Trilogy.