Oh yay things are working again

Blogger has been annoying me lately because I haven't been able to post. I still can't italicise or copy and paste into or out of the 'compose' window it seems.

I've published a few posts that were in my drafts box. Since writing them, I still haven't finished 'The Book of Rachael'. I am tearing my way through 'The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ' by Phillip Pullman and it's interesting to be reading the two at the same time.

So is it bad form to be scathing about a book in public like this? Is it okay to do it if the author is international and therefore distance makes you feel buffered? Is it unprofessional to bad mouth a book if the author is in Melbourne? I'm not a professional anyway but do I need to be careful about opinion? Because that's all it is. Reviewers are brutal often, so I can be, can't I?

What do you think? Is it a case of 'if you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing at all?' Then you have no texture...