Written Among The Stars

Well I suppose it was only a matter of time before the GR policy on writing about author behavior was taken to new, non-author-related levels. Alright, let me back up. About 3 days after the "announcement" of the new review policy I got an email from GR. They listed about 10 of my reviews and said that they were about the author's behavior and would be deleted if I didn't change them within 24 hours.  So I did. I changed my shelf names, and in place of the rule breaking statement about the author's behavior I put this:

"This review has been censored by GoodAuthors. They think your brains as readers are far too fragile to handle something that isn't about the book...I mean, you're just a precious little flower that needs protecting.

All comments on this review have been deleted because God forbid the GoodAuthors thought police think I'm flouting a rule in the comments and accidentally delete my account."

All of the reviews said the same thing and I did in fact delete the comments. That was about 2 weeks ago, yesterday I got an email that those same reviews had been deleted.  According to the email:

"Your reviews of the following books were recently flagged by Goodreads members as potentially off-topic....

If content from your account continues to violate our guidelines, your account will come under review."

Uh huh, so apparently in this new policy about not writing about author behavior...author behavior is also defined as "don't criticize us or we're coming for you." Also, I will note that previously GR said that it would not remove the book from shelves as long as those shelves complied with the guidelines.  Except that they did.  They removed not only the reviews but the shelves too.  Here's  the list:

Dark Prairies by R.S. Guthrie

Blood on White Wicker by Peggie Holloway

Vigilante by Claude Bouchard

The Second Amendment #1 by John Matthews

The Sword and the Dragon by M.R. Mathias

Rise of the Red Dragon by A.C. Quinn

Games Traitors Play by Jon Stock

Wool by Hugh Howey

The Necro Device by M.T. Dismuke

The Dreamer Genome by Steve S. Grant

Now, a quick note on the last one, The Dreamer Genome. I was really excited to read that book initially, until the author spouted off at the mouth about something stupid. Irritated because I wanted to read the book and he was acting like a jackass, I put him on a BBA shelf and wrote a review note about how I disliked what he had said and it was uncalled for. The author responded by commenting on my review and we had a good long conversation in which he explained himself and acknowledged that the comment he made was ill advised. By the end of the conversation I ended up getting his book and plan on reading it again. But GR even took the book off my to-read shelf. I have since re-added the books to my shelves, which I fully expect will soon come "under review" as well.