Omissions and admissions

It might be thought that a book reviewer needs instruction in the skill specified in the title of Pierre Bayard’s book about as much as a moose needs a hat-rack. But cynics should know that the few people who are guaranteed to read a book are, in fact, the last people to be paid to do so. After the agent, the editor and the copy editor, the book reviewer picks up a book like this and reads it carefully from beginning to end, making notes as he goes.

None of those people, however, are reading in any kind of normal way; during the industrial process of book production, the level of intricate attention paid to the text produces an experience which is nothing like real reading. A good copy editor will be acutely aware of the words, the sentences, consistencies of plot and so on in a way very few, if any, subsequent readers will ever emulate.