I'm a big bloke (7ft tall) and I am forever reading. This will mostly be my thoughts as I am reading and possibly a review or two. You may know me as Archer.
I am basically a lurker. My life revolves around my wife, my cats, Books, and entertainment.
I'm working on building and setting up a forge and I'm generally one of those people who can be found causing or in the middle of mischief somewhere...
I've been tossing this around in my head since Saturday morning when I woke up and I was one of the unfortunate 21 who had no prior warning that my thoughts on books/authors/bullshit, however you want to term it, had been summarily deleted.
It took 3 readings of that godsdamned email before I could form a coherent enough thought to utter "Daufq is this horse shit?"
I was emptied, I was aching. I felt betrayed, wholly and completely. What had I done wrong, really when you think about it? I'd refused to support author for reacting negatively to a readers opinion, I had shelved books of authors who had dubbed me a bully for not taking shit without speaking my mind, I had written a note to my self in a review space that I would not support a convicted paedophile by buying his childrens book (that's The Secret of Castle Cant btw).
I showed it to my partner and she was as flabbergasted as I. We took to the feedback threads and found some bullshit about policy changes that were tantamount to censorship and I'm not going to go into that, because about a thousand other people have already said all that needs to be said, it's bullshit pure and simple. I don't know whether this is Amazons doing, or Douthit, Bryant, Carufel, Dismuke... (Throw a rock you'll hit a self published author who feels wronged by everybody) who have finally worn down the staff with fear of action of some form or other, and quite frankly I don't give a flying fuck either.
I've been feeling burnt out for a year. I'd lost all drive to review, fuck I'd lost all drive to fucking read. I fell back into the doldrums becoming more and more critical so that books I would've enjoyed at one point left a bad taste in my mouth. Got thrown onto the Did Not Finish mountain. I ached. I cried (believe me you ain't seen shit until you've seen a 7ft tall beardy bastard weep over not liking more than two dozen books in a twelve month period).
Throw into the big ball of crazy the homesickness and all the shit I had started to feel because I had just moved away from everyone and everything I knew and cared about, and I was a mess. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I let down my friends Kat and Steph, they offered me a home at Cuddlebuggery Book Blog and I couldn't keep up. I'm sorry ladies, if you see this. I let you down and you deserved better. I have nothing and no one to blame but myself.
I stopped posting, I stopped talking, I caring. and Saturday was the straw that broke the camels back. I exported everything and brought this profile up to date. I deleted my Goodreads account and I walked away from it. I don't think that I'll be going back either. I don't have the patience any more. I don't know who's worse at PR recently, Microsoft or Goodreads... It's a tough call. I bit my tongue after Goodreads hid reviews from the community, I stuck my fingers in my ears pretending that I couldn't hear when people said this was bound to happen because Amazon were the devil. I completely ignored my own instincts when a certain author made up fucking bullshit rumours that I told him to kill himself when in fact I was quoting him.
And then I cried some more. Honestly I've been an emotional wreck. And this is more a post of me just getting shit off of my chest, so thank you for bearing with me, I'm just trying to find myself again and I know that sounds pathetic but it is the best way I can put it right now. I've lost my voice in a lot of ways. I'm angry all the time at all of the bullshit and I hope that this can now be a new beginnings because frankly...
I'M FUCKING SICK OF IT ALL.
So, with any luck, normal service of reviews, whimsy and possible crude, rude, juvenile humour will resume when I next review. Thank you.
TTFN
Archer.