Ironic Contradictions

I was personally surprised when looking for books on Doctor Who at my local library I stumbled upon the biography of Matt Smith. Whether you like his particular quirky take on the famous Doctor or not you must admit it is curious that a relatively young and still at the time unaccomplished actor possesses a biography.

As far as biographies go this is a lightweight, easily readable in around about an hour despite a page count of around 240. The main reason for this is the excessively large font size used to lower the amount of words per page. I still enjoyed reading this despite the short nature of the work, finding it provided slightly more information on the relatively unknown quantity that is Matt Smith. However this was still on the whole an average and easily forgettable piece of writing and as far as biographies go fell far short of usual expectations. In fact it almost read like a piece of work from a secondary school student rather than a book by an experienced biographer.

I couldn't help but notice that a large portion of the text was devoted to fleshing out the history of Doctor Who, the companions and Karen Gillan rather than Matt Smith. The biography part was hardly there except for three or so chapters. And so it was hardly a biography as such. I do hate when authors claim their book is something that it isn't...

I also hated the one thing that glaringly revealed to me the amateurish quality of the 'biography' even more so than lacking biographical detail. And this was spelling mistakes. They popped up regularly. Now if it was a piece of unchecked school work that would be understandable. But authors are supposed to have editors. And if I can spot such errors as 'no' instead of 'know' or 'there' instead of 'their' a careful editor should also. Not to mention on top of that the grammar and phraseology was clumsy in places.

In short it wasn't a memorable biography. The information presented was fine but the polish and delivery was not. It simply read as what I believe now it was: a book designed to cut in on the popularity of the new Doctor's first season rather than designed as a good read. So I don't really recommend this to anyone but those die-hard fans who will probably enjoy it no matter what I say...