Take Me to the River

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book for Al Green lovers, but NEEDS a copyeditor!!
Review: I love Al Green(e). Almost everyone who knows me knows that. For Christmas I received two copies of this book: one from my husband and one from a girlfriend. My husband ordered the book from Amazon.com. My girlfriend, however, purchased hers and stood in line at a bookstore in Atlanta to have Al sign it and personalize it. It was the BEST gift I received this Christmas! I read it in a couple of days and thoroughly enjoyed it right from the Introduction to the last page. I have a deeper appreciation of my favorite male vocal artist (Aretha being my favorite female) and although he sounded boastful often enough, he owned right up to it -- admirable. HOWEVER . . . Being married to a copyeditor/indexer/proofreader it was almost impossible to put up with all the stupid and distracting mistakes. A publisher the size of HarperCollins should have staff that is at least literate! What an embarrassment! For example, throughout the book "or" is used instead of "of," "spent" instead of "spend," words beginning with a consonant are preceded by "an" instead of "a," and the reverse happens for vowels. I know this kind of slack attitude is rampant in e-mail messages, but I started getting angry at the apparent total disregard for the English language. I hope this was a case of rushing to have the book out in time for holiday season sales (although there's NO excuse for such a sloppy job), but I started to wonder at one point if some misguided editor was trying to make the book have more of an ethnic sound to it. If that is the case, Mr. Green and Mr. Seay should have that editor's hide because it was downright insulting. And since that is probably not the case, I would advise future authors to think twice before allowing HarperEntertainment to publish their work using their current staff of copyeditors and proofreaders. By the way, I have the name of an excellent person if you want it!