My Book

I was randomly surfing the web yesterday, and I came across Google’s Book Search site. So, being narcissistic, I immediately looked up Beginning XML, to see what I could find. They have it listed at this page.

It’s pretty cool; they have links to places you can buy it, reviews, places on the web that reference the book, and the part that I found the coolest, they have references to my book in other books. If there’s some other book that has Beginning XML in the bibliography, you can click the link, and see the appropriate page from that book, with the reference to Beginning XML highlighted.

Of course, while I was there, I couldn’t stop myself from clicking on the reviews, and reading them. They’re all very positive, except for the first one, which is very critical. (Mostly of the fact that so many of the authors, including myself, thank God in the “About the Authors” section, but there are other critiques in the review as well.) Luckily, it’s a review that I’ve seen before—in fact, I think one of the other “God-thanking” authors forwarded it to me, a long time ago—so I wasn’t shocked by it, but it still hurts, a bit, to read it again.

Actually, for this reason, I tend to avoid reading reviews altogether, if I can. Most of the reviews I’ve read—from both critics and readers—have been positive, but I always hate reading the negative ones. Especially the ones with valid criticisms, those hurt the worst, but even the ones that are negative for the sake of being negative still hurt, on some level. (Even if I don’t always feel that it’s rational to be hurt.) I’m led to believe that a lot of authors tend to avoid reading their own reviews; if I ever take the plunge into writing fiction, I’m sure I’ll avoid reviews all the more.