The Reading Obsession

**love this

WTF?! Nobullying.org believes that negative reviews about the book is abusive?!!

I will be straight up: I HATED THIS ARTICLE. While it injects some basic facts, the over all piece is miles off the mark and doesn't even try to understand the full story. It was likely written prior to the GR policy change, hard to tell. But the final paragraph is the one that sets my nerves on fire.

Quote from the article: [emphasis mine]

"As such, their moderation team will continue to attempt to shut down the individual bullying attempts, but there will be no sweeping reforms in order to counteract the abuse that happens whenever particular posters try to make an author feel degraded by writing a negative or scathing review."

>> Read full article

Find this review and more at http://www.thereadingobsession.blogspot.com. Go. Click it. You know you want to.

Unmarked spoilers, because, frankly, it's so easily guessed that this doesn't even matter anymore.

Don't be fooled by the pretty dress. Or the hot guy standing behind her. Just think that he looks like a creeper, because that's what he is.

"But Alisa!" you cry. "Look at that hair! And that dress! And the fact that the girl's so pretty! What could possibly be wrong with that?"

Everything, naive reader. Every possible thing is screwed up.

Let me start out with this book. There's a serial killer luring all the surviving women to his house to kill them. But first, he gets their stories down. Interesting, right?

A girl called Evie comes in, and she begins telling her story. Still interesting?

Let's begin:

My head is a fun place ^^

Find this review and more at http://www.thereadingobsession.blogpsot.com

A one star review is just not that big of a deal. First of all, you're getting upset about a cute little pixelated star, and that's just ridiculous. You could argue that it's a symbol, I guess, and yeah, okay, it does symbolize that someone didn't like your book. But really, when it comes down to brass tacks, who cares?

Whenever I get a low rating, I do feel a little sad and disappointed. But it makes the four and five-star reviews seem all the more special by comparison. Things are valuable because they are difficult to get. If you didn't have to work for your four- and five-star ratings, they wouldn't be worth as much. Not to you, and not to the people who read them.

And, if I notice a lot of one-star reviews all saying the same thing, I try to use their criticism to improve. Some people pay for criticism! I'm getting it for free!

Even if their criticism is not valuable to me - gasp! how can anything not be about ME - it still has value to potential readers. If someone does not want to read my book, those are their personal reasons. More disappointment and unhappiness is prevented if people are forewarned by negative reviews. I would much rather lose a sale than have someone buy my book and absolutely loathe it. I've been there, myself. Reading sucky books, well, sucks.

And what if the rating isn't about the book? What if it's about you, the person?

I've been there, too.

But, like books, people can always be improved upon. Even if I get a negative review from someone who doesn't like me, the author, well, I just try to take it with a grain of salt. It's a reminder that I'm not perfect, that I can't please everyone, and that it's just foolish to think otherwise.

The bottom line is, people have a right to their opinions. It's easy to stand up for that when you're agreeing with the person - the real test of character happens when you disagree with them.

Alisa's Response to this:

WTF? Bloody Idiotic Hypocrites.

Actual Post:

For some one not giving a rat´s ass you guys were following JennyJen and other reviewers around for quite a bit, weren´t you? Making screenshots to prove her "wrong doing", posting her friends list - the old guilty by association you are so fond of - and creating sock accounts to intimitade her. And now a thread of physical violence. 

Your mommy must be very, very proud of you.

Hugo Grenville

[Reblogged from Howdy YAL]

New on my blog five love triangles that I found to be obnoxious, why they didn't work, and a weird connection between Batman and The Princess Diaries.

Find this post and more at http://www.thereadingobsession.blogspot.com.

This is the second actual blog post this week, and the second list. I don't know why, but I'm going through a "No! I don't want to rant!" stage right now, so you'll have to make do with sarcastic lists. 

So this has been circulating Booklikes a few days ago. 

And it seemed to make the STGRB followers so happy and excited. Obviously, it's a lie, but STGRB tried to make it seem true.

But then, Dawid said this:

and this:

Instead of owning up to their mistakes or just forgeting about the entire matter, STGRB calls Dawid "Dawidiot" for actually protecting their users, unlike Goodreads, and they try to insult Booklikes by saying it's not as popular as Goodreads. 

On a different note, Litchick has had STGRB trolls following her, and they're not even sneaky about it.

Hey, I'm on the Badly Behaving Booklikers and the Badly Behaving Goodreaders page! I can't stop laughing.To all of STGRB and their fans: 

[Reblogged]

Thank you, Booklikes! 

[Reblogged from Christina Wilder]

Where indeed?

By now many of us has seen the screen cap of Dawid (CEO of Booklikes) responding on the STGRB site. It was a quick and friendly reply to answer a question posed in their article (see screen cap of full article here).  So does this mean he supports them?  Of course not, so I think we can all turn down the alarm bells for a moment.

The STGRB wants us to believe Booklikes is on their side, but I refuse to believe it based on one post over there.  Especially when it addresses an email from Rick Carufel, a known troll himself.

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