We've already been roasted once: here's the Henry Bemis Books Moral Failure Report for August 2017.

“The month of August had turned into a griddle where the days just lay there and sizzled.” 

-Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“You’re a big one,” said Nancy, staring into Shadow’s light gray eyes with old eyes the color of mahogany, “a tall drink of water, but I got to tell you, you don’t look too bright. I got a son, stupid as a man who bought his stupid at a two-for-one sale, and you remind me of him.”

-Neil Gaiman, American Gods

August is over and it's time for our monthly maxima mea culpa to the readers and friends of Henry Bemis Books' Facebook page.

We posted 104 items last month, and someone objected to fourteen of them.

We admit we shoulda known better. All our old failings we acted out as summer waned. 

We did The Gays again: Christopher Isherwood (8/26); Max Beerbohm (8/24); and T.E. Lawrence (8/15, with four Hides!). 

An article on two men who married in the Rare Books Room of New York's Strand Books: I was just curious to see how long it would be before that one got blackballed (not very).

We snarked, too. A Guardian piece on yet another BBC Pride and Prejudice adaptation ("darker") we mocked (2 Hides, 8/31, just under the wire). Ditto the literature on tyrants, 8/23); and the Forbes list of 2016's richest authors in the world (8/4).

But serious work got knocked, too. The weekly promo for Rare Book Cafe (it did involve running the US blockade of Cuba, so the combo of Trump snowflakery and Communism was bound to raise someone's animal spirits (8/18).

We peddled some golf books the week of the PGA championship in Charlotte (8/6; one Hide). We agreed with actor Stephen Fry's appreciation of author P.G. Wodehouse, forgetting that Fry, too, is a fag (dammit, they are just everywhere!). 

One Hide.

Some of you got all Literary Deep State, too. When I thanked viewers for making my home state the biggest source of viewers for Rare Book Cafe (8/11), kazing! Out came the ruler. 1 Hide (we topped the poll last week, too).

But this one tickled me: someone Hid the Henry Bemis report on negative feedback in July.

Overall, though, Henry was astonished to see a twenty-two-and-a-half point drop from our previous record.

But not gratified- yet. It remains to be seen whether we have actually begun to mend our ways, or whether a bunch of our regular marker-downers were just on vacation.

Don't call, though. We're sorry already.