Madeline’s Comments (group member since Nov 22, 2010)

Madeline’s comments from the The Extra Cool Group! (of people Michael is experimenting on) group.

My best troll story happened on the comment thread for Tender Buttons. I can't stand Gertrude Stein, and wrote a snotty, three-sentence review stating that fact. Someone called Ashley, who has since deleted his comments, just attacked me in the comments, calling me stupid and immature and then for some reason (because I guess he couldn't think of enough things to say about my actual review), he started insulting my Shakespeare reviews as well. I fought back, naturally, but tried to at least sound mature and level-headed (although the name "sugartits" may have been written by me at some point.) Then Ashley called me a twatfritter, and things escalated from there.

The best part was that, after exchanging insults and angry comments, out of nowhere Ashley suddenly apologized to me for attacking me, and explained that he'd read my review when he was having a very bad day and needed to pick a fight. It was a nice, albeit perplexing conclusion to the best troll fight I've ever had.

The link to the review is here
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

but sadly Ashley deleted all his comments after he apologized. You can still see my responses, though, and several loyal Goodreaders coming to my defense.

I've been on Goodreads since 2007, and since I've written a review for every book I add (don't ask me why, somehow I can't seem to stop) I can definitely see my reviews changing and evolving over time. For instance, the very first review I wrote, for The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, goes like this:
"Sherman Alexie makes his short stories feel like poems. All very well-written, albeit depressing. Funny at the most inappropriate times, and very entertaining.
Three other equally good Alexie novels: Ten Little Indians, Flight, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian."

That's it - I explained what I liked about the book, and a little of what I didn't like, but didn't go into any detail or show evidence. And then I recommended three other Alexie books I read, which in my mind meant I didn't have to list them on my "read" shelf. (I don't do that anymore.)

When I first joined Goodreads I had exactly 2 friends - my mom, and a real-life friend who has since left the website. Since hardly anyone was reading my reviews, I didn't feel any need to put a lot of effort and critical thought into my reviews, since they were mostly for my benefit.

I think what caused a big shift in my reviewing style was when I wrote the first of my Shakespeare parodies - I wrote it for fun, and didn't think anyone would really read it. But then it started getting a lot of comments (this was way back in The Good Old Days, before we had all this fancy new-fangled voting system and the follower requests) and people seemed to like it, so I wrote a few more parodies. That led to me getting more friend requests (from people I had never met, which at the time struck me as so weird, and as my friends list grew and I started reading the thoughtful, funny, critical, and insightful reviews that everyone else was posting, I wanted to do the same thing.

Now when I write a review, I seriously think about what I liked and didn't like about the book, and then try to find direct evidence to support those claims. I usually try to quote directly from the book, and I'll do my best to make the review sound funny. The review style I strive for, I think, is someone who is well-educated and thinks critically, but speaks like a normal human being with a dirty mouth. (if you ever see one of my reviews use the terms "themes" or "post-colonialism" in a serious way, it's a sign that it's time to take me out back and shoot me.)

And, if we're being totally honest, when I write a review now I'm always thinking at the back of my mind, I wonder how many votes this will get? Will people like this? Ooh, I'll throw in a movie quote! That's funny. And a dig at Twilight, that always gets votes.

I have some normal genre shelves (kids and YA, history, etc), shelves that reveal what I thought about a book ("the movie is better", "ugh", "all time favorites", etc), and the shelves that are for personal record-keeping, such as my assigned reading shelf (where I also try to record the class I read the book for) and my shelf for books that come from the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

Also if I notice that I'm reading a lot of a certain genre, I'll add an appropriate shelf. After taking a poetry class I now have a Poetry shelf, and this semester when I noticed how many mystery novels I was reading I made a shelf for those.

I'm probably a little bit of a vote whore, because I know that every time I write an abridged Shakespeare review it's probably going to get a lot of votes, even if the whole thing is just "'Fuck you, Hamlet!' 'No, fuck YOU, Laertes!' DIES."
(in my defense, I started writing the Shakespeare reviews before Goodreads introduced the vote system)

But I definitely agree that the best way to get a ton of votes is to write a critically strong but funny review of some really popular, usually YA book - visit the Twilight page sometime and see how many votes some of those reviews get.

Based just on the numbers, my most popular review is my abridged Romeo and Juliet - I've gotten a few notifications about people voting for it lately, which means a lot of high school students are going to be tested on the play soon.

I'm a college senior studying Literature/Creative Writing. My future career goals include Panhandler, Ghostwriter of Celebrity Biographies, and Well-Educated Trophy Wife. When I'm not making fun of Shakespeare and fighting Goodreads trolls, I occasionally review a book like a rational human being.