Love in the Margins

This Is Not Porn – I’ve lost hours to this collection of lesser-known images of celebrities.

• In Defense of the Amateur Review – Authors who call for more professional reviewing or for some sort of standards miss a crucial element of the equation: they don’t get to decide which reviews readers find useful.
  

   

  "The reality is that people’s opinions are often unreasonable. So someone rated a book one star even though they’ve never read it. Who cares? Not the author’s fans. It’s worth giving readers some credit that they’re able to figure out which reviews are good and which are bad for themselves, just as they can figure out which books are good and bad on their own. There are places for professional, industry reviews; but if books really want to thrive and stay relevant, there also needs to be sites where readers can discuss books freely without authors and others in the publishing industry peering over their shoulders or pulling puppet strings. That’s how Amazon and Goodreads reviews became so influential to begin with."

• Why I Don’t Just Go to the Cops – Rebecca Watson, who’s a prominent voice in the online atheist movement, explains why “just call the cops” is an unhelpful response to people who describe being cyberstalked and threatened.
  

   

  "I don’t go to the cops because the cops don’t care. I’m sure they’re doing very important things, like shooting drug dealers or whatever. And for every Anders Breivik there are 100 men who will never go further than hating women from the comfort of their basements; for every George Sodini, 100 men who only wish they could gun down women.

   

  And I guess wishing isn’t illegal."

• Guess what? Its nothing new but I want you guys to read it anyway. – It looks like Goodreads is casting their “no discussing the author” net pretty broadly.
  

   

  "My reviews did not “threaten” any GR member, neither did I pay mafia to shoot up a few people. But, I think it’s useless to debate about this. I mentioned Cassandra Clare by her name in both my reviews and I guess the Cassie club spammed it and according to GR’s new policy my reviews were violating it. Bunch of noobs."

• Dear Romance Authors: – I am always here for this discussion. Strong isn’t a synonym for bully.
  

   

  'What on this floating ball of rock possessed you to pick all (or at least most) of your leading men out of a catalog from Assholes-R-Us? Bad boys are fine. Alphas are fine. Dominant is fine. These traits are not the problem. They all make for quite good reading, thank you. My preference, even.

   

  No, the problem is that you are depicting all three by writing the kind of men who should rightly be kicked in the groin and left in an alley somewhere!"