Literary Horror discussion

Didn't the "Literary Darkness" group used to be called "Literary Horror"?

Thanks for the invite! I probably won't be very active around here until September or thereabouts, but I'm happy to be on board!

Thanks for the invite!

I've just joined - thank you for having me, so to speak.

I've noticed this group has got empty bookshelves. Is there a reason for this? Are we saving them for each monthly read or should members be doing some about this like posting favourite books or their own books or.... ?
Just asking.

Randolph wrote: "J.S. wrote: "I've noticed this group has got empty bookshelves. Is there a reason for this? Are we saving them for each monthly read or should members be doing some about this like posting favourit..."

In response to the above, I've attempted to add

American Psycho to the group shelves, but it hasn't appeared on them, only on my personal shelf. Not sure if it's something I did wrong or an issue of the shelf settings?

You can get banned from GR?

Oh god... I have dealt with "Rivka" before... jeezus... what an eff'ing busy body.

I think she takes herself and her "job" way too seriously.

This ridiculous. Have you lost any of your reviews or shelves?

Maybe I need to double check my own, I have savaged a few books before that I found particularly worthless.

It's not a censorship policy; it's a don't-be-a-dick policy. They are coming down on openly hateful shelves and reviews that aren't about the book, which IMO they should have always done.

How do you define "being a dick" Scott?

That's a bunch of shit, Scott. I'm sorry but it's not true in my case. I was labeled a bully by a site that I will not name. An independent author here posted a list of names on his blog as bullies and mine was one of them.
I put up a review, with NO STAR RATING, calling him out on it. Since I have no blog, or no actual book with which to retaliate, what was I supposed to do? I didn't call him names, I just explained what happened and I ended the review telling him he could kiss my ass. And I shelved his book as Author rude to readers.

So unless they want to apply their dont-be-a-dick policy to the author whose blog badmouthed me, they should leave me and my shelves alone.

I'm not a bully, nor have I ever been. I support independent authors every week of every year by hosting a group at Shelfari. I support them by buying and reviewing their books. I hardly write any negative reviews at all, because I usually don't waste time with bad books. I've never written a disrespectful review in my life. It may be critical, but never disrespectful. The two other reviews of mine that are supposed to be taken down consisted solely of the author's OWN WORDS, like the guy who said outright that the shooting in Newtown was a ruse by the ultra liberals who want to ban guns.

So, I ask you. Who is the dick in this situation?
And if it's not censorship, what the hell is it, because I'm not a dick?

Whoa... Charlene... I had no idea.

Yes, it should apply to authors as well.

Sorry that I went off there. But like my reviews, I am not going to delete it. I stand by what I said.

I'm just angry at what's going on here. I received a letter about their deletion of my shelf and my 3 reviews, but prior to that, a bunch of readers here had shelves and reviews deleted with no notification whatsoever. So, in my opinion, we can add Goodreads itself to the list of dicks. (I'm saying that as someone who used to LOVE this site. But I do think that what is going on is censorship, and I hate it, in all of its forms.)

Hey Charlene,
Did you save the reviews anywhere?

I'm sorry your reviews got deleted, but I did not see anything unreasonable in GR's original post on the subject. People began extrapolating and now the feedback thread has reached cartoonishly epic proportions. (Someone just compared GR to a sweatshop factory.) Most of the people there have shown their true colors and I am not at all surprised that GR has not responded to them. I wouldn't either. From what I can see, they have only proven GR right.

So... here is the thing Scott, there is all of those people over there, calling for GR boycott, etc. And then there is everyone else, who is not part of any crowd.

I think this kind of policy is an over reach and may likely zing normal reviewers. Why they don't just simply zap the accounts of certain obnoxious reviewers who can be shown to be malicious is beyond me. I think the hasty policy implementation and refusal by GR to respond in any meaningful fashion indicates that they do see this more as an obnoxious reader/reviewer problem and not as an overly sensitive, hyper aggressive author problem. Charlene has now effectively been classified as an "obnoxious reviewer".

That pretty much sucks.

I think there is both going on here, but the policy does not indicate that at all.

Thank you, Benjamin, for succinctly stating what I was trying to say.

And no, I did not save my reviews. They were really just a way for me to remember who these people were and I only chose one book from each of them to review.

One last thing, don't underestimate what some of these upset authors will do...to the point of publishing reviewers names, restaurants they frequent and the time they frequent them...all on the site that shall not be named. Yet it's the reviewers getting their hands slapped.
The site Booklikes is being overwhelmed by GR users importing their information. I'm considering it myself.

I've been thinking about it myself. I heard about the policy change from http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/201... , actually, and was pretty... I will be generous and say creeped out. And it's slowing me down rather on writing a review of an anthology that was given to me by one of the authors in it. (I'm pretty sure they won't mallet reviews which cover an author as generous and awesome and cool, but part of my brain says they should be just as likely to mallet those as ones which say an author is miserable and creepy and sleazy, because hey, reviewing the book not the author, right? Thank you, over-worrying brain. Thank you.)

Does anyone know how hard it is to import to Booklikes? Inertia is part of what's keeping me in place ATM, which I am not thrilled with.

(I haven't had any reviews malleted. I don't expect to, since when an author is sufficiently vile that I cannot enjoy their stuff, I don't read it and thus don't review it, but I'm still growing keyboard-shy.)

Here's what Ray Garton has to say about the whole thing, (prior to the new GR policy, back when this all this started),which is a completely different view from the site that you are citing, Frances:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ray-gar...

He brought up another thing they did, which was posting where a certain reviewer's child went to school. But it's us reviewers that are the problem, not them.

...really? Both seem to say that the "Stop the GR Bullies" site is a huge problem, both seem frankly disgusted by the presenting of authors as fragile flowers who are being "bullied" by negative reviews.

I grant Sparky's post focuses more on the effects on the reviewers when authors don't behave well, and Ray's focuses on the expectation that exists for the authors to behave well (which with STGR is not being met), but they seem to be at least on the same side of the street and heading in the same direction.

Frances, I apologize. I didn't read the whole post before. I just did and you're right. I'm sorry.

Hey Charlene,

I posted a link to this thread referencing your experience of losing some of your reviews unfairly. I hope you don't mind? I'm just trying to bring awareness to some folks on the Literary Darkness group.

That's okay, Benjamin. Thanks for asking. I can post a link to the official notice GR put out the other day when I get to a keyboard. Scott referenced it earlier on this thread, I think.
I'm mad about it, but my three reviews were nothing compared to what several other reviewers have lost.

(Charlene: no worries, I totally understand. :) )

Wow, Charlene, you're about as far away from a bully as I can imagine. You'd be a rubbish bully :)

What an idiotic over-reaction by GR.

Randolph, to your last paragraph, YES! What if I marked Mein Kampf and wanted to shelve it as Author committed genocide? I can't do that now?

Thank you, James. BTW, thanks for the rec on Knock Knock, I really enjoyed it. :)
And yes, if I'm a bully, I've failed miserably.

Anyway, here is a link to the thread which GR put up after already deleting reviews and shelves:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

Granted, some of the responses are over the top, but I still view this as censorship and I don't like it.

One of my reviews is still up. Take a look:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

How horrible of me, right? If you look at the comments under the review I linked in my review, the author's comments have been deleted, but many of the comments start off with the author's previous comments. Here's one quote from one of his sock puppets:
"Robert wrote: "You fucking go sock! I going get your name fucking name traced to get back for bullshit ..."

And look, his comments reflect the quality of his writing!

A lot of the problem started in the YA Paranormal arena. It should not be surprising (and I will be stereotyping here)

Ah! Lampshade hanging.

where the readers are mainly 12-18 year old women (the gender isn't really relevant,

If you believed that, you wouldn't have mentioned it. ;)

but maturity is) and the authors are, in general, bad to terrible.

In a discussion about authors behaving badly and being enabled, rather than quality of writing, that's an interesting statement to make!

I think I will go have a discussion with people who do not resort to broad stereotypes of professional authors in a particular field, and generalizations about "12-18 year old women" instead of 12-to-18 year-olds. Much as there are other options than GR to catalogue my books, there are other options than this one thread to discuss censorship issues, reader reaction, and filtering of books.

Good day!

Is there a quick way to see if any of my reviews have been removed?

Glad you liked Knock Knock Charlene. There's two other novellas (so far) that tell related stories. The latest one, Astoria, was simply brilliant.

Randolph wrote: "My problem with the whole mess is where do you draw the line and who draws it?"

I don't understand why there is so much confusion over this. Reviews need to be about the book. How is that ambiguous?

I don't care if the author isn't rah-rah gay people or if someone found naughty pictures on his computer. Reviews like this are 100% useless and I hate reading them because they waste my time.

As for the obnoxious shelf names, they are petty and bring the site down IMO. Getting rid of them only makes the site more pleasant for everyone.

Scott, best thing to do when you see a review you don't like is to stop reading it... just as if you hit a book you just don't like, you can go ahead and set it down, if that is your prerogative.

And reviews need to be about the book can be really interpreted broadly, no?

I think plainly stating in a review that Ronald Kelly is "looney" because he doesn't believe in evolution might be straddling the new policy. That kind of statement is more about the author's personal beliefs than the book. I know if you read your full review in context, you are drawing a connection to the stories, but not everyone might agree with what you did. (I certainly have no problem with it).

So here is parallel for you to digest, some author writes a crap story about horrific death and dismemberment. Some GR reviewer gives it one star and the author loses his shit over the one star, sends a testy message to the reviewer, and a less than constructive exchange ensues. The reviewer then goes ahead and clarifies in his review that " this author is an aggressive nut case, much like his aggressive and psychotic characters in his book. Stay far far away from this one."

Hey, look at that, this fictional review just made a statement about the author while tying it directly to the story. Not that unlike your own review.

My comments about Kelly pertained to things he explicitly stated in the book, not other unrelated things he did in his personal life (which I wouldn't know about, anyway.)

If Kelly decided to respond to me in an aggressive manner, I would probably just let it stand for itself. The whole problem here is that such interactions have escalated into an all-out war, and that is what GR seems to be trying to put a stop to.

The problem with the non-reviews is clutter. When reviewers band together and write reviews about the author because he did something they didn't like, as I recently saw on a children's book page, it means I have to go through a whole page before I get to a legitimate review -- if there even is one!

James, I read one of them yesterday and enjoyed it a lot. Thanks, again. :)

Scott, it's more like the authors banding together to bash reviewers, if you ask me, and they're winning. Since it apparently isn't affecting you , why continue the conversation?
I don't bother reading reviews I don't like, I just scroll right past them..It's not like it's time consuming our anything. And if you think we're blowing things out of proportion, fine. I just happen to disagree.

I guess the point is moot anyway,

Now, see? I find that review to be helpful. Not to mention hilarious. :)
I find nothing objectionable about it. But will GR?

Did Mark Monday have reviews or shelves deleted?

Randolph wrote: "What about deleting a 5-star review where the reviewer says "I'm the authors first cousin and I want to bear all his children" and nothing else. Shouldn't that be deleted too? Is GR deleting thes..."

It should be, yes.

Charlene wrote: "Scott, it's more like the authors banding together to bash reviewers, if you ask me, and they're winning. Since it apparently isn't affecting you, why continue the conversation?"

I'm participating in the conversation because I believe GR's actions will affect my GR experience, in a positive way. I've been wanting them to take a harder stance on reviews for a long time.

I don't know who started it at this point. I've heard stories about the authors, but I've seen the reviewers in action, over in the other forum, and I've got to say: they'd be hard to top.

I haven't seen any reviewers posting personal information about authors, including the restaurants where they eat and the schools their children attend. Have you?
Since I HAVE seen the authors in action and have had my name tarnished by it (and it continues to be tarnished by the shitty site that shall not be named) , I have a different view. When those opinions are brought here via an author's blog, that affects my feelings on the matter. Since you haven't pissed off any independent authors yet, you feel that this doesn't affect you. That's fine.

If you're happy with this new policy change, so be it. I am not.

Sorry to drag this thread back to the subject of bookshelves, but now that I seem to have acquired the basic skill of putting books of the group shelf, is it considered acceptable to add one's own book or books to the shelves or is the unwritten rule that you only add books by others that you have read or are interested in?

Randolph wrote: "J.S. wrote: "Sorry to drag this thread back to the subject of bookshelves, but now that I seem to have acquired the basic skill of putting books of the group shelf, is it considered acceptable to a..."

Gosh, how do you know about my forthcoming zombie, bizarro chainsaw mayhem epic?!

Randolph wrote:

It appears that a sure fire way to boost group membership is to add games to a group. Should we do this? ;D

Heh, heh. If you’re asking a serious question, Randolph, I will only state that I’ve seen a number of these games in different GR groups and, while I am in no way offended or bothered by them, their popularity leaves me utterly baffled.

Randolph wrote: "It appears that a sure fire way to boost group membership is to add games to a group. Should we do this? ;D"

No Games please

Randolph wrote: "Karl wrote: "Randolph wrote: "It appears that a sure fire way to boost group membership is to add games to a group. Should we do this? ;D"

No Games please"

It's kind of an old joke with me, when..."

I have just been reading some of the older posts about what gets you banned. To my mind it's a good thing to try and get people to read, and an even better thing to try and warn folks regarding your opinion of what not to read. After all its just an opinion. No one is forced to adhere to any of it. Sadly some one always wants to be in charge and control.

Randolph wrote: "It seems that when you open the group now the number of members shows on the browser tab."

?????????