Editorial Review: Oval Office Oddities, An Irreverent Collection of Presidential Facts, Follies, and Foibles (Harper Paperbacks)

Fawcett, Bill. Oval Office Oddities: An Irreverent Collection of Presidential Facts, Follies, and Foibles(Harper Paperbacks).

Reviewed by Arlene W. Robinson

I adore nonfiction as a reader, and enjoy editing nonfiction manuscripts, so when I picked up this book I looked forward to an interesting, informative read laced with humor. And, as I always do when beginning a new book, I hoped to pick up a few interesting tidbits I might share with future clients who've written similar books.

Not long into the read, I found myself spending more time counting the typos I kept encountering than enjoying the "oddities" presented -- while a few typos are certain to slip by in any published book, the number present in this book were enough to distract me from the read.

As I tried to ignore the typos, I found the writing a good match for a nonfiction tome for general readers: Fawcett has an easy, engaging style. It's just a shame, I decided, that the publisher allowed the book to slip through without a thorough proofreading. That happens sometimes.

But then I ran into a far greater concern -- Fawcett wrote that John F. Kennedy is buried in the National Cemetery in Bethesda, Maryland. (Kennedy is actually buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington DC!)

My "editor's eye" kicked in again, actively looking for questionable facts. And my doubt, once established by that first error of fact, led to finding a couple of entries I was certain were incorrect, and over a dozen that I doubted. I could have gone to Google to verify their accuracy, but ... well, that's not really the reader's job, is it?

Typos I can forgive. Errors of fact? Not so much. But the "oddities" didn't end there, unfortunately. I soon encountered an entire section made up of several lengthy (several-pages-long) passages that had nothing to do with oddities, presidential or otherwise. These passages were a dry rendering of the factors leading up to each major war in US history. It was almost as though I'd suddenly and accidentally picked up and begun reading a book on the background of war. While I've encountered an rare unrelated passage or two in a book -- what reader hasn't? -- I thought it strange to see so much unrelated text. "Oddities" indeed!

I suppose an established writer like Fawcett can be forgiven for producing a manuscript with these types of problems, and I suppose I will allow him one "stinker." I certainly don't consider that I wasted my time -- "Presidential Oddities" is a fun, light read. But, considering the cost of books these days, I think readers expect more careful fact-checking and proofreading that this title received.

Arlene W. Robinson

ARLENE ROBINSON has developed and edited 200+ full-length manuscripts in a variety of genres since 1996. Her clients include women's fiction author Angie Daniels, sociology professor Joyce Tang and college-success guide author Josh Richardson. The true crime memoir The Twelfth Man Standing received Turner Broadcasting Network's Trumpet Award in 2002, and 'PRESSIONS: Memoirs of a Southern Cat by Edith M. Holmes, won the YOUnity Reviewers Guild Top Honor Award. Arlene welcomes new or published authors as clients, and enjoys helping journalistic, business and academic writers transform their writings into marketable, polished products for mainstream readers. She also takes pride in helping non-native-English writers produce topnotch fiction and nonfiction works.

While not a professional humor writer, she could be. Arlene lives in the Deep South with her probation officer/journalist husband and two almost-adult sons, and looks forward to the day when her human offspring venture into the world as independently as she envisions her writings springing onto bookshelves.

Substantive and developmental editing, copyediting
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"Arlene is everything you want in an editor: thorough, timely and accommodating. If it weren't for her, I certainly would not have landed a publisher for my manuscript. Not only was her editing topnotch, her advice on everything about publishing was very helpful. Arlene really cares about the work she does and it shows!" — Josh Richardson, Ahead of the Pack: Balancing Your Way to Personal Success in College, Thomson Delmar Learning

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