Talk:Bookends (album)/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Richard3120 (talk · contribs) 05:06, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Comments from Richard3120:
Would be good to see this album achieve GA status, it's an important and best-selling record across English-speaking territories. I've taken the liberty of first tidying up the punctuation in the article: many of the apostrophes and quotation marks were in varying fonts, and punctuation like periods (full stops) and commas were incorrectly placed before the closing quotation marks. I left the wording alone for the most part (save obvious errors), but there are some words that to me don't seem right in the context of an encyclopedia article.
 * First paragraph of lead section: "Released several weeks prior to the penultimate Bookends in 1968..." – I imagine what you are trying to say is that Bookends was Simon & Garfunkel's penultimate album before splitting after Bridge Over Troubled Water's release, but I don't think you can use "penultimate" here without some sort of reference to that. I would just remove "the penultimate" from this sentence altogether.
 * Third paragraph of lead section: "Initial sales for Bookends were immense..." – can you use "immense" referring to sales figures, rather than physical size? Would "substantial" be better?
 * Third paragraph of lead section: "premiering alongside The Graduate soundtrack..." – I'm not really sure what you mean by "premiering" in this context.
 * Third paragraph of lead section: "The album has continued to see critical acclaim..." – I prefer "receive critical acclaim", I'm not sure acclaim is ever "seen".
 * 'Background', first paragraph: "during a period in which the duo had broken apart..." – "broken up" or "split" is more usual in the context of musical groups.
 * 'Background', first paragraph: "brought upon new critical and commercial success..." – remove the word "upon".
 * 'Background', second paragraph: "Artists in the time period..." – better to say "artists at the time...".
 * 'Background', last line: "The duo offered another new song, then titled "Mrs. Roosevelt", that was not as developed..." – I think it should be stated here that this was the song that later turned into "Mrs. Robinson".
 * 'Recording and production', first paragraph: "on Columbia's dime" – I don't think idiomatic expressions like this should be used in the article, I would prefer "at Columbia's expense".
 * 'Recording and production', second paragraph: "allowed Simon to show off his chops..." – same thing regarding idiomatic expressions... how about "allowed Simon to display his talents..."?
 * 'Recording and production', second paragraph: "the harmonies the band were known for slowly exited" – doesn't sound right to me, I think "gradually disappeared" or something along those lines would be better.
 * 'Recording and production', third paragraph: "John Simon's work with the duo begat several tracks..." – don't think I've seen the word "begat" used outside of the Bible! "Produced" would be simpler.
 * 'Recording and production', third paragraph: "Her reportings were printed..." – "reportings" isn't a word you would use here, maybe "Her observations were reported" would work better.
 * 'Song analysis' section: I know you have split this into three paragraphs to make this section more readable, but given that the first half of the album is meant to be a collection of songs on the same theme, I wonder if it would be better to split this section into two longer paragraphs instead, based on side one and side two of the record, and not split the paragraphs halfway through side one's "concept" album.
 * 'Critical reception' section: obviously it would be great if this were longer, but I understand it's not easy to get hold of reviews, particularly from the original release in 1968. I am British and in a month or so I should be able to visit the British Library and try and track down reviews from UK music magazines (NME, Melody Maker, etc.) if that helps, as well as more modern reviews (Q, Mojo, Uncut) of the 2001 reissue.

Cheers, Richard3120 (talk) 05:06, 9 May 2014 (UTC)


 * No progress made in a month. CLOSING REVIEW. Please address these issues before re-nominating. Thanks!-- Dom497 ( talk ) 00:35, 9 June 2014 (UTC)
 * My fault entirely Dom – I never intended to open the review in the first place, I just wanted to comment on it, and I didn't have the time to carry out the review. My apologies to all involved. Richard3120 (talk) 09:10, 9 June 2014 (UTC)