A little advice for those of you who write as well as read: any kind of writing is a case of pitching and catching. The pitching is when you put the words on a page; the catching is when somebody reads them. And, in between, things can happen.
When you put the words down, you do so with a certain context in mind. When the reader picks them up, a whole different context comes into play. So what you said may not be what the reader reads.
This observation stems from a blogged review of The Damned Busters. The blogger read a couple of chapters then decided she (the blogger's gender is an assumption-from-context on my part) knew where it was going and didn't bother to read the rest, but skipped forward to find a few words that confirmed her prejudices.
What can you do when someone trashes your book without reading it? Nothing. And it's not just unprofessional bloggers who do this sort of thing. My second novel was professionally reviewed (and positively) in the Toronto Globe and Mail by a critic who obviously read the first chapter and the last few pages.
Again, what can an author do? Nothing, except keep on pitching
