A few days ago I uploaded my little
eBooklet to Amazon and was amazed to get a review that read thus ...
"obviously thrown together as today is
jan 16, 2013 and this was written in 2013. spelling errors, paragraph errors,
grammatical errors. it's sloppy and not worthy of the memory used to store on
your kindle. PASS."
... which really got my goat (he's very
sensitive).
I was not only hurt but mystified. Firstly how would they know when I wrote
it? It's just a list of ideas I've
assembled over time and when I thought there were enough to make it worthwhile
I published it. Secondly I've always
been a good spellist (that, incidentally, was written tongue in cheek) and
didn't throw the thing together at all, at all.
It is, however, just a list of ideas I thought might be useful to people
not so familiar with cooking as I am. It
is not supposed to be a work of literature.
Luckily I got some good reviews too on Amazon and also supportive
messages on Linkedin, Google+, Facebook etc.
In particular a very kind lady, Rae Katherine Eighmey (who writes about American food history) was good enough to comment on my last post with some
useful ideas but her main point which I had actually considered but in the
other direction, so to speak, was that I wrote it in English English. Oddly enough I am so very familiar with using
American vernacular (e.g. zucchini instead of courgette, eggplant instead of
aubergine, arugula instead of rocket and a la mode instead of with ice cream!) that
I actually had made a special effort to ensure my English was the homegrown version!
During my many years in the Caribbean I
have lived, worked and played with American chaps, read their books, cooked
their food and never once failed to understand what they were saying or thought
their American spelling to be 'wrong', just not quite right perhaps!!
Seriously I would never have thought that
British English would have caused such a problem to Americans. As Mark Twain (respect!) said ...
"I don't give a damn for a man who can only spell a word one way."
Not seriously; I also speak Geordie and a
little West Indian - I might try using those in my next book!
Howay
mehson!
