I joined Goodreads last year and then forgot about it. Every few months I log in and tell it I’ve stopped reading whatever book I was reading the last time I logged in, and take a minute to laugh at how it’s not really possible that I could be reading a) just one book at a time and b) the same novel for six months. In this way I guess I am ascribing motives to Goodreads that it doesn’t have; it just knows what I tell it. Maybe people I know who are on Goodreads think I’ve been reading the same novel for six months. Or maybe they never check in either.
It’s funny how there are certain websites or services that you join and use, use, use. Until you’re lost without them. And then there are others where you use, use, forget. Forget forget. Use. Until it becomes one more password, one more place your picture is, one more result that comes up when you search your own name.
There is probably a similar website for writers to log what they’ve written, what they’re working on, how far they’ve come, what they think of what they’ve done so far, what their goals are. I wouldn’t use it, but it probably exists.
Last night I finished a book called Heft by Liz Moore. It was a totally absorbing read; sad and sad and sad and then hopeful. I knew the hopeful part was coming, that was one of the reasons I was so absorbed. (also, characters and beautiful prose, etc.) I needed to get to redemption.
One thing I enjoy about dysfunctional lit (Dyslit? Dysfunlit? DysNOTfunlit?) is it makes me feel so much better about my pokey little life. In the case of someone whose life is comparably dysfunctional, it might not be so much a comfort. I wonder if people with dysfunction rampant in their lives might read more romances.
Just making that observation makes me feel like a tool. And like I’m asking for poop to rain down on my house. Good thing the book I stopped halfway through so I could read Heft in three days is a very light –though thick– beach book called — wait for it — Azur Like It. Let’s all groan together, shall we?
I know what you mean about GoodReads. I forget to tell it I’m done, or started something new, and since I read *right* before falling asleep I trundle along at a snail’s pace anyway, but forgetting means that yes, for three months, people think I’m reading a 345 page book. Sometimes it’s true, is the problem, y’see.
As for “I wonder if people with dysfunction rampant in their lives might read more romances.” I, too, suspect exactly that, at least when a chunk of the rampant dysfunction is regarding their romantic pursuits. What’s interesting to me is that the plotlines of these books are, from what I’ve been told (and the very few I’ve skimmed through), largely about romances with at least one or both characters with rampant dysfunction of one kind or another in *their* lives.
So I wonder if it’s: “Boy I’m glad I’m not THEM” combined with “THEY’RE still going, and they’re worse off than I am.”
Also sex. Lots of sex in those books. Hooboy all of the sex. Maybe there always was, but the ebook has meant you can read *anything*, and it all looks the same to the casual passer-by. Could be ‘War and Peace,’ but could also be ‘Pool Boy Delicious Corruption 7: The Final Corruptionating.’
Either way, according to Good Reads, I go through books WAY slower than my cohort.
“POOL BOY DELICIOUS CORRUPTION 7: The Final Corruptionating” is the best title for anything, ever.
I MEAN EVER.
It’s probably already taken by an anime series of the non-sexual kind. Think big powered armour and ‘splosions, and guns ‘n stuff. Very little sex going on there.
Unless, y’know, that’s your thing.