Don't waste your time with this troll. He's just ignoring everything that disproves his argument.

Spoken like someone who hasn't spent any time in a public library. You can't see past the book checkouts (and even then, people checkout books for a lot more than pleasure reading).

For all your babbling about "markets" you're failing to realize that public libraries are already extremely popular. The vast majority of people like the existing library system just the way it is.

This is an absolutely terrible idea that's antithetical to the very idea of libraries. Public libraries provide a multitude of services that people need, and which are not profitable. Take them away and people will not only lose inexpensive access to books. A lot of people will lose access to the internet who can't afford to have it at home. Also gone will be cheap faxing (which you'd think would be an obsolete technology but is still required for a lot of things), free notary services, free computer help, and one of the last public places people can go where they're not forced to spend money merely for existing.

Privately-owned libraries will inevitably become profit-driven, and from there it's a matter of time until they start losing services that people depend on.

My Goodreads friends are a mixture of IRL friends, current and former coworkers, and a handful of random people who sent me friend requests out of the blue that I accepted (I don't do that on other social media, but on Goodreads it's whatever). I think a lot of other people find friends by joining groups.

Seems to me like most of the accounts I run across with high friend/follower accounts are people who deliberately cultivated a large following because they are book bloggers. I have no interest in becoming one of those, and their reviews will always display before (and therefore help to hide) mine, so I just write my reviews for me. If someone else finds and enjoys my review that's cool, but I don't expect it.

Perhaps not, but nor do they exist for the purpose of actively turning students away from the enjoyment of reading. Yet I can personally attest that this book has done that to several people I knew.

Gatsby is either my 2nd or 3rd least favorite book I've ever read (behind The Catcher in the Rye and maybe also The Elegance of the Hedgehog I can't decide).

We read Gatsby in my AP English class in high school and analyzed it to death. I hated it then and my opinion has not changed in the last couple decades. Sure, it's packed full of symbolism and all that, but I think it's frightfully dull and doesn't have anywhere near as many interesting things to say as critics and English teachers would have me believe.