Anyway, I think the point is that this kid seems to have gotten a lot of the responses you suggested (it seems extremely likely that it's the sort of thing he hears in counseling) and although your suggested response seems reasonable, his letter makes it clear he is lashing out at that kind of response and has…

" You might have been a tiresome brat, but this guy clearly isn't"

I think the angry tone invited that kind of response. Even the content asked for it — don't give me therarpy, don't tell me X, don't say X.  Well, if you eliminate all the considerate responses, then you're explicitly asking for something else and maybe even the opposite.

You guys sound like fun guys to see in public.

"Mostly short stories and poetry collections. A few novels, most of them about being a depressed 20 something in Brooklyn."

i accidentally typed another comment here and can't figure out how to delete it, and now I've made a spectacle of myself.

Try Electric Literature, Book Riot, The Rumpus,The Millions, The Nervous Breakdown, The Collagist, and Melville House.  All really useful for this type of info. They each have their pros and cons as sites, but I think you'll find at least one of them to be what you're looking for.

Here's another discussion of this year's books by people who have read a much wider range of stuff

I would be a failure as a podcaster if I didn't mention my own show: Book Fight, which tries really hard not to be dry and humorless.

That's not remotely true. There are tons of books coming out every week. Tons. Novels, story collections, memoirs, big presses, small presses. It's just that only about 50-75 of them get anything like mainstream coverage every year, and usually the books that get that coverage are by authors people have already heard…