happy new year! did you know goodread users had shit tastes?

Goodreads has done a round-up of their 2011 readers’ choices votes or whatever it is.

It is a veritable showcase of bad taste and the lowest common denominator.

Consider, for example, the “Travel/Outdoors” section.

Do you see what I see?

1. white man goes to Nepal and helps little children! Look at white man, is he not magnificent and virtuous? Why yes he is! Oh yes he is.
2. white man tries to “re-create (sic) the original expedition to Machu Picchu.” Awww, isn’t that cute. 
3. white girl travels to South America and learns things about life. Deep, man, deep.
4. white man’s “blow-by-blow account of [...] trip across Europe, the former Soviet Republics, Russia, China, Pakistan and India.” Oh wow, I bet he learns all kinds of amazing soul-deep truths about poverty and stuff. There’s something about white man being made to eat sheep’s brain. How exotic!
5. white man does something unremarkable and trivial.
6. white woman shits out some useless drivel “set against the fascinating backdrop of modern China.”
7. white woman and white man do boring shit.
8. white woman travels to India. Having learned fuck-all about her destination, she is surprised at “signs that life here is less Westernized than she’d counted on.” Oh man, she’s so culturally sensitive!
9. white men do useless shit nobody should give a shit about, but many shits are given because, dude, white men! They are the most important people in the world, didn’t you know.
10. white man in New Mexico.

I haven’t looked closely at the rest, but I’d be very surprised if they too aren’t of the “Adventures of Whitey the Mighty in Exoticland” flavor.

You may have noticed the pattern: pretty much every single piece of tripe on this list? Are about white westerners and their funky exotic adventures in Exoticland (i.e. any developing country) and the accessories (i.e. people who are not white) that “enrich” and “humanize” their tales or whatever the fuck buzzwords are being used nowadays. I haven’t read any of this because I’d sooner burn them and their writers than read their words, but from the summaries it appears that most of these accounts are of people… not doing anything very much, or doing anything meaningful or interesting. It’s just that they are white, you see, and the adventures of white people are to be prioritized above all others. The lives of Indian women, say, can only be seen through the white-western filter because god forbid they have their own voices, and should they write their own books about their own lives–seen through their own eyes, not a colonialist’s–it probably wouldn’t be voted to the top of Goodreads. There’s a lot of soul-searching and whatever vacuous, empty things white people like to do in these books (again, judging from synopses) and a lot of EXOTICLAND IS SO EXOTIC, MAN being touted. It’s such a nice, Aryan little list.

But enough of my anti-white agenda to start off the new year with.

Ah, fantasy. Guess which title was voted top of the top, best of the best?

Yep, George R. R. Martin “Knights Who Say Fuck” himself. What else. Followed by: book I know nothing about, Patrick Rothfuss’ saga of Gary Studom, a PTerry, a book I know nothing about, a Grossman title I only know about due to its misogyny, an overrated and unfunny piece of shit, the latest installment of Rape Jewels, a Carey title I only know about due to its racefail, Prince of Rape Queues, several books I don’t know much about (though apparently the Jo Walton is nice), Deathless, a book from Mr. Rape the Lesbians, something I don’t know, Kingdom of Incest, and finally a Brooks and a Goodkind. So in toto, we’ve got one Valente, a PTerry, a Jo Walton… and the rest is nothing but shit shit shit shit cocks shit cocks shit. Lots of neckbeard reads there, too: Brooks, Goodkind, Sanderson, Abercrombie, Lawrence, Martin, Rothfuss, Grossman. In fact it’s quite the neckbeard convention with just about every single one of their icons represented–we’re just a Richard Morgan short. Off to a good start, aren’t we?

I’m sure the books I know nothing about are literary masterworks, at least. I guess.

It amuses me that a bunch of these covers look like they could have come from exactly the same series by exactly the same author. Oh YA, do keep sucking and I’ll keep on mocking. And hahaha Cassandra Clare. Truly a genre of lofty, lofty standards. Plagiarists are people too, amirite? At least most of the girls on these covers look alive this time around.

I’m not sure why I even bother with this section. Again, a bunch of covers that look like they come from exactly the same series, exactly the same author, down to the title trends. They probably might as well come from the same author. And, hello there, a Charlaine Harris novel! Does anyone reckon she’s stopped being a racist, misogynistic redneck? Me neither. Jim Butcher in his wonderfully classy form, of course, and from what I hear just as misogynistic as ever. People are still reading Laurell K. Hamilton? Hey, Kim Harrison, stopped being homophobic yet? I don’t suppose any of them learned to write, either. Oh, well. A genre with standards even loftier than YA, really.

To give you an idea: the top book here? Features characters with names like Vishous and Payne. I would rest my fucking case if this weren’t followed by a title penned by one “Damon Suede.” Ahahahahahaha lolcats almighty. May I say that all the bare male chests are really off-putting and borderline vomit-inducing? Can’t cringe away from the monitor fast enough. Amusingly hairless too, seeing that they are all white dudes. Blargh.

What a hive of scum and villainy.