The Great Goodreads Diss List (Part 1)
Context: For many years now, I have been collecting funny lines from Goodreads reviews to share with my coworkers. (I do collection development, reader's advisory, and weeding at a public library, so I read a LOT of reviews)
Are some of these, perhaps, rather mean? Yes, but they are also very funny, and come from a place of honest frustration. In the tradition of Bargepole threads and lists everywhere, names and titles have been censored.
"First, I want to say that I understand how hard it is to write a book and how amazing it is when it is actually published. Congrats to the author for that accomplishment. That said--"
"Warning: This review will be lengthy due to pure hatred."
"I found myself feeling really, really annoyed with the world that this book is allowed to exist. We live in a universe where the passenger pigeon is extinct but this book goes along merrily being read by unsuspecting lovers of words and ideas and stories? It just seems like too much, you know?"
"Don't do it. Don't spring the cash for the hardcover. Instead, eat an entire bag of Twizzlers, spend some money you don't have at a high-end department store, look up on Facebook the shady college boyfriend that made you cry, research the current value of your home or 401K and then read all about how the big hedge fund managers are faring during the economic crisis. You'll feel about the same stomach pain if you waste your time reading this book."
"This wretched novel begins with the mugging of an old lady and it appears I may be in the process of repeating that loathsome crime as [author] was 78 when she wrote it. It is not nice to put the boot into such a poor defenseless old creature lying there with only a damehood, a Booker Prize and a few million quid. It’s a nasty job but somebody has to do it."
"I think this is the way dead people would write, if they could."
"I am considering setting up SPABB: Society for the Protection of Accurate Book Blurb. This blurb appears to have been written by someone from the publishers who met [the author] the night before, got very drunk, lost his notes and then constructed something in a fug of hangover the next morning."
"I congratulate [the author] on the early half of his book, which was thoroughly fun and made me laugh and think. I congratulate [the author] on the second half of his book, for finishing it. It reads like that was difficult."
"…a woman whose taste in contemporary literature has roughly the same batting average as a pitcher in the National League."
"The author is a pompous windbag."
"Recommends it for: No one. Recommended to me by: A friend who apparently wished to cause me great suffering."
"Makes me wonder: is it possible to obtain similes at a volume discount?"
"The repeated phrases made me want to mail a thesaurus to the author."
"I'm disappointed in myself for finishing this book."
"if the author described [character's] eyes as "obsidian" one more time I was tempted to write her and ask if her thesaurus broke."
"They say that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters would, if given infinite time, eventually produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. [This book], on the other hand, would probably take the average monkey just under two hours."
"I can't imagine what the author had to do to get this nadir of Western literature printed on innocent trees, but he does seem to know a LOT about being well-connected in New York."
"This book is so bad it is almost worth reading just to make you appreciate the other books you are reading."
"Reads like it was written by a brilliant author, the night before it was due."
"raises interesting questions, like: can a book be so bad as to constitute an act of terrorism"
"has this author ever spoken to a human woman"
"This acorn has fallen so far from the tree that it can’t even see the forest."
"I’m guessing they are touted as ‘beach reads’ because no one will care if they get dropped into the ocean."
"This book begins with all the energy of a hand vacuum near the end of its battery life, and the pace doesn't quicken much from there."
"At least everybody’s eyes stayed the same color this time around.”
