10 Quotes by G.R. Reader

As the voices fall silent, the individuals who make up the amorphous and always changing community must decide for themselves, as they always have. I can’t write a coda because I can’t speak for others. I can only and ever speak for myself.

The GR site has acquired its market value through the work of its community.

The Internet is transient. Information can be removed with a couple of mouse-clicks; it is an Orwellian dream. We have been advised, by people who claim to know about these things, that there is no point in protesting against a social network. Whoever owns the network will run it as they see fit, normally to maximize their profit margin. Members who dispute the rules will simply be thrown out. The Terms of Use are written so as not to allow them any recourse.

This book is irrelevant to Goodreads because you can’t buy it on Amazon. Also it talks about oppression, censorship etc. and no one really likes reading about that because it’s boring. Yet, let me tell you anyway.The title of this book is The Image of Everyday Life in Press during the Martial Law, which is a little bit ridiculous because what could be read in Press those days when it was so heavily censored?

There was something so unutterably ridiculous about the sight of a US company deleting posts accusing it of censorship that many other people began to protest.

By deciding what is, and is not, allowed to be discussed in a review, by removing discussion of social context, and saying that only the words on the page count, Goodreads is ignoring fifty years of development of literary criticism, and is engaging in censorship.

If people wrote their reviews on paper and put them into a real, physical library, I am sure that the Goodreads administrators would be very reluctant to pull them down from shelves and burn them. When you can get rid of a piece of writing just by clicking on a few links, there’s a temptation to believe that it’s less serious. But it isn’t. It’s just less clear what you’ve done.

And that's the most horrible thing about censorship: To avoid falling afoul of the censors, we question ourselves and censor ourselves and make a big deal out of things in our heads. We do the work of the control freaks for them, out of a desire to avoid them.

At your next book club meeting, picture me sitting quietly in the corner, taking notes on your preferences. Imagine the next day you get an email from me trying to sell you a new grill — or a book — or accessories for your Glock. That's the Amazon/Goodreads deal. It's appalling. But everywhere in the press, you'll read about the genius of Amazon."(Michael Herrmann and the booksellers of Gibson's)