As a future regular feature of FlyPast, these columns will, as readers might expect, include in-depth reviews of the latest available aviation-related literature; a reader-service in that each title received from the publishers will be summarised in content, source, price, and particularly in the context of 'value for money'. However, reviews will be only part of Bookshelf. There will also be news of forthcoming titles, ocasional reviews of past, rare 'classic' books, and succinct comments on various facets of the aviation literature scene today. As an example of that last point, take the subjects of reviews and reviewers. Frankly, reviewers - like politicians - appear to require few, if any, esoteric or academic 'qualifications' for their task. Certainly, rather than simply presenting an objective summary of a book's content, far too many reviewers seem solely intent on impressing the readers with self-awarded oracular knowledge. Overlapping this category of reviewer is the vast army of self-styled 'experts' - that horde of unpaid shop stewards of the international Nit-Pickers ' Union - who extract sublime joy from winkling out some minute printed error in books often containing thousands of facts and figures. It must be grand to live way up there on Olympus ...!
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