Friday, December 10, 2010

Read Your Books

When writing a review of anything, whether it's a collection of Garfield comics or Ulysses, please remember to read the source material.

And that the work in question has actually been published.

The A.V. Club is an excellent entertainment review site; I have a feeling this incident is an isolated one.

I'm probably biased because I'm a big fan of regular features like Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops column (and now book), with its in-depth cinema essays that transcend the usual pessimism of critical analysis, and The Inventory, an attempt to connect partially-related songs, movies, books, actors, etc. into eclectic and entertaining lists.

Some of the reviews on the rest of the site are hit or miss, but in general, it's a great thing, this A.V. Club.

That's why a fake review is such a shock.

Don't lie, kids, especially when you work for an otherwise very neat site.