Review: An actual work comp audit would be more fun
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 06 25, 2011
Bill Morison relates his experiences as a novice work comp auditor for a large insurance company, a job he finds pointless and boring, in a book that is unfortunately pointless and boring.I'm usually a fan of workplace humor.  Ideally, the author strips away the mundane majority of the work experience, leaving only the enjoyable and/or amusing bits.  Unfortunately, this author manages to find only mundanity.  For instance, he spends more than 200 mundane words ("There was a path leading from the parking lot to the pavilion. [...] It was at this entrance that I found the standard park grill.") describing the pavilion at which the company picnic was held - a description with absolutely no relevance to any of the picnic events.  He describes the teambuilding games at the picnic as "worthless," provides no other information beyond a listing of games, and then tells the reader that they were the most fun he'd had at the company.  If they were fun, then show the fun!Leaving aside my lack of appreciation of the author's humor, this book has other flaws.- It contains a random creepy advertisement for another of his books,Legon Awakening: Book One in the Legon Series.  "It's so good and the author's voice--so hot," and "...but he does have a sexy voice and the story is great," says Bill's coworker Adrian.- It contains random and uninteresting IM conversations between Bill (screen name Bmorisson, or sometimes Bmorrison, but never an accurate spelling of his last name) and Adrian (screen name HorseChick - there's got to be a story behind *that* as your workplace IM name, but unfortunately we don't learn what it is).Bmorisson "hey you're on the EAC right?"HorseChick "yeah why? If your going to complain about the pot luck last week I don't want to hear it; wasn't my idea"Bmorisson "chill. I wasn't going to say anything about that. I'm supposed to be in the meeting this week; does that mean I'm on the committee? Oh and pot lucks are dumb."HorseChick "lol don't make me walk over there! [...]"- The dialogue is stilted, superfluous, or both."Hey bro, how's it going?""I'm good, you?""I'm doing good."- Compound words are written as two separate words (pot luck, "Halloween was making a come back"), and separate words as compound words ("Everyday, he wore khaki pants with a faded polo").  Not just once or twice, but over and over.- Sentences are randomly strung together.  "It was a local number some 720 one."- The author picks the wrong word.  "She straitened a bit."  "My arms were wound around her waste..." "...women that all wore sandals, heals, flip flops..." "It sounds like your trying to get rid of me." "Never did loosing your job seem to affect me."Two stars because the grammatical issues aren't bad enough to make the book completely unreadable, and because the last 30% is significantly better than the first 70%.  Not enough better to make it worth slogging through the first part, but enough better that ruthless rewrites might have some chance to save it.