“20 Things I Hate About You, Henry Bemis”

There's a story I heard once about two old Jews, friends since forever, who ate lunch at the same deli every day for decades.

One remarked, “I don’t know why we keep coming here. The food is terrible.”

“I know!” the other explained, in between bites. “And the portions are so small!”

I think about those two at the end of every month, when I tote up the user data for Henry Bemis Books. There’s a group of regular readers who don’t seem to like much Henry serves, yet they keep showing up. There’s no pleasing them, but they can’t tear themselves away somehow.

We ended the month liked by 494 users, but lost four to the “Unlike” button: eight/tenths of a percent. We don’t know why. If a user doesn’t employ the “Unlike’ button on particular post, there’s no way to tell what roused their ire. The “likes” graph just falls into the red for that day.

In 2016, however, our unlikes have come, almost without fail, in the last two or three days of the month. This suggests some long-suffering, slow-burn feelings being acted out upon.

For the year to date, the top reasons for Henry Bemis’s posts getting negative feedback- or the dread “Unlike”- have been seeing posts on books by, or authors who are, black, women, Jewish, or gay, and anything with a whiff of the avant-garde about it.

July was pretty much much of a muchness on those scores, though not entirely. Fifteen posts got sixteen black marks (the one in which the author posited that seeing certain books you like on a stranger’s bookshelf almost guarantees you will become friends, got two).

One on early women book collectors got a “Hide All”, which is like unfriending someone in a personal page. An article by LA Times book critic John Scalzi, plumping for To Kill A Mockingbird  as the Great American Novel, got the same treatment (civil rights is always a dodgy subject), as did the fiftieth anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s suicide (people who do that go to Hell).

July 12’s birthday profile of the Chilean profile Pablo Neruda scored one Hide. He was a Communist and wrote about sex (he was in favor of it).

Elie Wiesel’s death we announced on July 2; he was a survivor of the Jewish holocaust in World War II but not of the “Hide” click of a reader. 1788 others saw it and took no action.

Another story about a woman got the “Hide” on Independence Day. It was about the Philadelphia lady who took over her husband’s print shop while he was fighting under George Washington. She did very well, and landed the Continental Congress’ contract to print an edition of the Declaration of Independence for circulation to the colonies.

Two sports posts got the curtain drawn over them, both on July 10. One was about tennis as a sublimation of life (or the other way around?) as seen in the works of David Foster Wallace; the other, about how the exploit’s of Iceland’s soccer team gave the island nation’s publishing industry a big boost. Go figure.

July 7-12 was the week Henry could do no right. Besides the transgressions justs mentioned, readers didn’t like the birthday profile of scifi writer Robert A. Heinlein (7/7; Hide), or an article on why authors burn their papers before they die (same date; same fate). The discovery of some lost Beatrix Potter drawings got the crook from offstage July 9, as did a story on the use of eating and digestive metaphors for what kind of readers people are. This, it turns out, has a literary pedigree several centuries long, but since it all ends in the lower GI tract (making doody, as the Donald calls it), that post got thrown out, if not up.

A harrowing article by a woman who discovered another woman was buying her books in ebook form, rewriting them and publishing them under her own name- to both profit and acclaim- wasn’t liked by somebody July 10 (more women stuff there). And we wrapped up the month with  the trap door being dropped for a promo for a podcast of the Rare Book Cafe on the 23rd.

Overall, 10.5% of the 189 posts in July got teed up by someone.

That’s a marked improvement  from June, though: 19.58% of that month’s posts were vexatious- mostly, the daily profiles of LGBT authors in observance of Pride Month. Every one of those got a black mark.

I’ve read studies indicating that two percent of Facebook readers will hide stuff on your site, come rain or come shine. My natural inclination is to be the Sally Field of booksellers, adored by all. I feel those “Hides”, every one.  But I’m happy that the posts singled out every month are always among the most-read of that period. Since we reach 15-20,000 people a month, I guess the more who see a thing, the more likely someone won’t like it.

But all remain welcome.

I’ll be back in 30 days with new news of the garish and unpopular.