One of the great things about writing books is that people can anonymously review them on Amazon.com. I don’t often make a habit of reading the reviews, but every so often, when I feel like donning a hair shirt, or hitting myself about the head with a board, or otherwise reminding myself of my corporeal existence by inflicting pain on myself, I merrily hop on over to Amazon to read up on the reviews for Vegan Freak. Granted, our reviews there are largely positive. I know that the book has helped people and continues to help people; we often get email telling us as much. And while I can stomach the less-than-stellar reviews that take on our ideas, or that show at least a thoughtful engagement with the book, some kinds of reviews annoy me. To wit:

* Last time I checked, one review scalded us for like quoting other books. Though our book is by no means an academic tract, it is, however, a primer for the interested vegan. As such, we recommend other books to read, and — imagine this! — we actually cite other books to establish our argument. Apparently, for high school sophomores everywhere citing sources is so fucking passe now that the Internet has, like, made it easy to just, like, copy your whole paper.

* We poke gentle fun at hippies and middle-aged folks in the book. We’ve received email from middle-aged folks who have appreciated this, and laughed along. But there are surly middle-aged people who read the book, found the one line where we pick on them, and got as angry with us as if we’d emptied their 401k plans. Similarly, the hippies get so mad you’d think we’d thrown their hacky sacks down the gutter. To the hippies and the oldsters: we love you both (unless you’re wearing patchouli). It is a joke. Relax. Learn to take yourself less seriously. You’ll live longer.

* Our book is like, repetitive. I find this one particularly interesting, if only because I hear students who don’t understand what they’re reading telling me that the books are “repetitive.” Students tell me that Marx is “repetitive,” or that academic journal articles are “repetitive.” While our book has a great many flaws (some of which are embarrassing in retrospect) I wouldn’t call being “repetitive” one of them. Instead, I think that “repetitive” is the stand-in for “I couldn’t be arsed to read this.” We explicitly wrote the book not to be repetitive, but instead to be conversational and short enough even to cater to the text-message, multi-tasking, idiotic and divided brain that is a direct effect of pop culture these days.

Of course, there are other reviews that make excellent points, both laudatory and critical, and we’ll use these reviews for the upcoming revision of the book. There are problems with the book, and there are lacunae, grammatical errors, and other issues which need to be corrected. But this is the case with any book, for any book is necessarily partial, incomplete, and biased by the perspective, talents, and ideas of the authors. Ours, in this respect, is no different.