This one really makes me laugh.
1) Jonathan posted a protest review on this book.
2) I liked his protest, so I posted my own (whimsical) different protest review.
3) Goodreads deleted Jonathan's review.
4) I added Jonathan's review onto the bottom of mine as a Hydra.
5) Jonathan re-posted his review as a Hydra review.
6) Goodreads deleted both of our reviews.
7) I repost mine as a Hydra.
8) You post mine as a Hydra!

To make life easy for you, I've put the pre-formatted review on my blog - HERE - so all you need to do is cut and paste and add your own notes (if you wish to do so).

Hate censorship? Hug a Hydra!
(Thanks Ruby for that catchphrase, it put a big smile on my face.)

Hugz for all!
-C
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I have no intention of ever reading this book because the author is a super-douche who:

1) Thinks He-Man is better than Thundercats
2) Regularly wears denim on denim combinations
3) Drinks black tea with sliced lemon in it
4) Doesn't like cats
5) Never calls his mother just to ask how her day has been
6) Itches his balls in public, and then shakes hands with people
7) Has never seen E.T.
8) Doesn't like my poetry
9) Gets a little ball of spit on the corner of his mouth when he's angry
10) Bought a fish bonker for it's intended purpose

EVEN THOUGH I HAVE NOT READ IT I HAVE RATED IT TEH ONE STARS!
(thus skewing the 'true' ranking of this book, which is, like, SO unfair to the author)

//Flagged, yes please?

In support of this protest review by Jonathan.

If a review gets taken down - the hydra reviews will post it back up. If a shelf gets taken down - the hydra shelves will come up in replacement. How many heads does the hydra need before the censors drop the sword?

THIS IS BRILLIANT! The very protest post I wrote this in support of has now been taken down by Goodreads' censorship patrol! Can anyone else hear the Hydra coming?

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This review by Jonathan was recently removed by Goodreads for breaking their ridiculous censorship policy - but is reposted here thanks to the good folk at Hydra Rebellions.

So apparently Goodreads want to remove, without warning, any review that doesn't actually talk about the book (well more or less) but attacks the author. Not hide, not ask the author nicely to change, just a total removal. So I'm not actually going to write a review about this book, I'm testing the waters (inspired by certain friends) to ask whether we can all show Goodreads just a little how ridiculous and unprofessional the sudden changes to its terms of service are by posting reviews and shelves like this. I mean, really, what kind of grey area are we going into? Are some of the excellent humorous reviews out there just going to disappear, hence removing some of the fun of this site? If this review still stands by the same time next week as it is (including shelves). Well, I'll take it that Goodreads are making empty statements and that is that - more for the sake of legalities. Also, Chairman Mao was a rather vile dictator who killed off millions of his people. More of his own people than Hitler committed genocide. I can't see his ego getting stroked from beyond the grave... Which is why I want to further add. Why are Goodreads making this effort to stoke author egos? I see more directed at readers here. Yes, maybe some shelves are pointlessly rude. But not giving people a chance to save content and change (doing a backflip) is just unethical. And Mao is still evil. UPDATE: Still nothing from Goodreads on what they've done so unprofessionally. An amendment and apology couldn't be that hard right

Spread the call of the Hydra!

quotes taken out of context are the worst.

More or less on impulse, we went on a short trip today to see the Musée Suisse du Jeu in La Tour-de-Peilz. The setting is extraordinarily charming: it's an old castle on the shore of Lake Léman, not far from Montreux.



Our excuse for visiting was a simultaneous Go exhibition being given by a German 3 Dan player. I hadn't played for a couple of years, so I asked for a three stone handicap and after many vicissitudes finally managed to win the game. The German guy was a good sport about it, considering that my position had been close to lost at one stage, and we spent a while chatting about Go-related trivia after the game.

He had a bunch of interesting anecdotes, the best of which related to the infamous Little Red Book. I already knew that Mao had been a keen Go player in his time. What I hadn't heard was that he apparently used Go metaphors and comparisons quite frequently. The translators had however all decided that a Western audience wasn't going to understand any of that stuff, so they chose to render them as chess terms instead. Since Go and chess are fundamentally different games, and many Go concepts have no chess counterpart, the result is often utterly nonsensical.

This seemed almost too good to be true, and I was amazed I'd never heard the story before... but he seemed very sure of his sources, and among other things claimed to speak decent Chinese. Can anyone confirm or deny it?