It was the reception, yes.
His excuse is that he was trying to describe his state of mind at all times, including the time he hit another car and panicked because he was afraid of getting lynched by a mob of people who were probably black or Italian.
Of course, none of this matters to someone who's interested in Super Mario Bros. 3 in the technical level, because Bob is a moron. If he had tried to do an analysis of his favorite movie, regardless of what it was, we'd have to read about him talking about watching the same movie twenty times which he does to find as many angles to analyze as possible, where he talks about the food in the concession stand, how pleasant the woman who is selling him the movie tickets or his small portion for an average person of popcorn-and-soda is, and how he had to change his bathroom break schedule after every screening so he could stop walking out on the same spot every time.
He tried to sell his book as an analysis of what Miyamoto and co. were doing but instead he just made it an ode to himself in the best attempt at Ozymandias-ing himself.