You Will Never Be My Friend (Request)

I get a lot of random Friend Requests on Goodreads. I'm a Librarian, and I have a few lightning rod reviews, so people find me. Generally I'll accept because I love reading reviews from new perspectives, or of niches of prose that I'm not exposed to. I've got friends who gobble classics, manga, memoir, and Epic Fantasy, helping point me to what I might have missed, or challenge my own prejudices.

Sometimes, though, I cross someone like the guy who friended me last week. His name is withheld because he's got enough anger in his life.

Right around when I accepted, he posted a tirade review against Stephen King's The Stand. I love The Stand; it's a landmark achievement in Epic Urban Fantasy. "M-O-O-N" is a reference I keep going back to, and the uncut edition's epilogue is intensely unnerving. This fellow hated the pacing, the unbelievable plot elements, and mostly, the act of being alive while reading it. It was unfortunate in its bile and lacking the perspective-challenging insight that I need out of a negative review. Still, not a sin.

Then he posted a review ripping apart Andy Weir's The Martian. I'd just read that, too, and was curious for his dissent, but more than half his review was quoting people who'd liked it and questioning how they could have read the same book. His argument that "funny isn't a personality" deeply bothered me, as I found the narrator's humor incredibly refreshing (I've slightly misquoted so he can't be google-stalked).

Yesterday he posted a 1-star review of Hamlet. 

Now look: Hamlet is the only Shakespeare I unequivocally enjoy. I dislike plenty of popular and important works. You can't be a writer without having taste clash.

But to have hated The Stand, The Martian, and Hamlet all in such a short period of time was alarming. That's a wide range of promising fiction to hate.

When I checked his profile, I found he hadn't given any books more than two stars so far this year. My knee-jerk response was to worry he had some psychological problems.

Then I saw he'd self-published two books of his own. He was an author on Goodreads there, at least in part, to promote his own work.

Sometimes, unfriending is the kindest recourse.