December 17, 2013
Much as I appreciate integrity in others, I try to act with integrity myself. So I’m finding myself in a quandary. At our last BAIPA meeting (www.baipa.org – our local network of people involved in all aspects of self-publishing) I offered to write a review of a member’s book in exchange for a free copy of what promised to be a good read from the pages I skimmed. (And the cover is stamped with the seal of the Ben Franklin Award of IBPA – Independent Book Publishers Assoc.) I am not aware of having met the author, which lifted some constraints I’d have been concerned about if I didn’t like the book.
The story is about the Amish – particularly about the importance of forgiving the sinner, if not the sin. I love to explore how other cultures make peace with the vagaries of life in a body, which is why I love traveling and learning the languages of countries I visit. (My recent six days in Mexico improved my Spanish 20-fold. Though that is not saying much.) So I plunged into the book eagerly.
In fact, it’s not badly written and there are even some passages describing an accident that I would call “riveting” (and I’ve written in this blog about the difficulty of sustaining intensity, so I was impressed). But half way through I could not take time from my clients with deadlines if I had to force myself to meet my commitment. (Maybe these comments will suffice for a review, but likely not what was expected.)
These are the two problems I encountered. It starts off in the first person voice of a mature man about to become an Elder (a community spiritual leader, not just an older person). He castigates himself for hiding his misbehavior as a nine year old. Then he reverts to telling that backstory. Unfortunately, neither the language nor the intellectual maturity belong to a boy. Yes, it is a man telling the story of his youth. But to engage the reader in the dissembling and guilt of a child, the voice and perception of the storytelling needs to be a naïve voice in order to invoke the empathic response that the author clearly wants.
The other issue is who the storyteller is talking to in the first person. There is nothing in the first half of the book that would indicate a reason for telling it to someone outside the community. That would be appropriate if he were in front of “an English” (non-Amish) judge explaining the reason for his illegal behavior. But he’s not. In fact the tone of his perspective is a musing on his own behavior as a child and the ramifications as he carried the guilt through adulthood. Clearly he would not be explaining his cultural customs to himself.
The author admits in the beginning that she (non-Amish) wrote the book out of her need to forgive the driver who rendered her unable to walk (temporarily). So she turned to an understanding the Amish culture for guidance. (An intellectual understanding, not a participation in.) She does communicate the thoroughness of her research, and the details are intriguing. But neither the character nor the situations he encounters are conveyed in a way that drew me toward him. I would much rather that she’d taken her research and written an article for Wikipedia – something succinct and straightforward, rather than hidden under a black cloak and matching pocketless, side-buttoned pants.
Notes from the week:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TOO MUCH PROOFREADING! Early this week, a project I have been nurturing since March was finally available to purchase on Amazon. The entirety of the process was a delight: the easy, spacious working relationship with the author. Looking at my garden in July and seeing the perfect image for the cover: a Mexican sage bush full of its purple furry pipecleaner flower stalks. Working with Jeff Brandenburg (www.jeffbrandenburg.com) on both the cover and interior design. Together we chose the font, the ornaments (this is a book whose audience is predominantly women dealing with weight issues, so we wanted the visuals as soft and inviting as the author’s voice – in the downloadable guided meditations on the website (www.drdavidlevenson.com) and in the encouragement of his written words).
The most important quality of a book designer in my mind is not the brilliance of the design, but in the willingness to tweak and trim and change that design to suit the author (or in this case me as the book shepherd – a role I took on because the author knew nothing about publishing and would likely have fallen into every pothole on the road to publication. And there about as many as in the New York City I grew up in.)
You can see the table of contents at www.DrDavidLevenson.com and also see how beautifully Dyan Ferguson (www.dyanferguson.com is “coming soon” – when she has a moment between paid projects including my own website) integrated the visuals of the book into the website.
And you can “Look Inside” (as well as buy) the book at http://www.amazon.com/Maintaining-Your-Weight-Loss-Mindfulness-Based/dp/1493598937/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387241701&sr=1-2&keywords=david+levenson. If you check it out and want to give me feedback on it, I’d like to hear.
The reason I’m mentioning the project at all (besides being so proud of it and the quality of communication among all the players – a virtual love fest) is that two days after it was up on Amazon for sale, Jeff noticed that chapters 3 and 4 were both numbered 3. After Dr. David, his wife, and I proofread the text at least 12 times among us! Jeff discovered this when he was reformatting the text for the ebook version (which will be available for Kindle in the next few days). The corrected version was up on Amazon within 24 hours. We’re impressed.
It’s always the big fonts – headlines, chapter titles, etc. – where the errors are missed. You can’t proofread too many times.
Now I’ve got to proofread this piece.
Until next time, delight in the process.