Goodreads and the Crushing Weight of Literary FOMO

cynic

CONSUMING POP CULTURE is my job. Well, writing about it is my job, but that makes keeping tabs on movies, television, podcasts, Twitter/Instagram feeds, and everything else a professional necessity. Yet, there's one high-protein item that always seems to be missing in my media diet: books. It's not that I don't read them—I've got two to three going at any given time—it's that I feel like I don't read them enough.

How do I know this? Fucking Goodreads.

I hardly remember joining Goodreads, but according to my account it happened in April 2010. Back then, before every social network felt like a data breach waiting to happen, it seemed easier to join any hot new online community—and then, once it went out of vogue, to never think of it again. I thought that's what would happen with Goodreads. I made a profile, logged a few books, added a few friends, and for a couple of months got really excited about tracking my progress and the progress of others. Then, perhaps enticed by the internet's next shiny object, I fell off. I stopped updating and didn't check in on my profile very often. But I didn't unsubscribe from the emails—and that's where the trouble started.

Every few days or weeks, just when I started feeling positive about my biblio advancements, one of these messages would come across the transom: "Updates from..." Upon opening it, I'd find out that someone who I knew had a full-time job and active social life had finished two novels in the time it'd taken me to get through the jacket blurbs on David Sedaris' latest essay collection. Deflation followed. Not only did I feel uninformed and slow, I felt somehow left out. I like talking about books, and thanks to Goodreads I had a constant reminder of all the great books I hadn't read and all the conversations I couldn't yet join. It was pure literary FOMO. (A point of clarity: I was also that sucker who tried to participate in Infinite Summer, the challenge to complete David Foster Wallace's behemoth Infinite Jest. That summer ended in nothing but infinite regret.)

This hasn't really stopped in the seven years since. I've learned to manage the disappointment I feel when I realize I haven't finished a half-dozen novels my pals have, but there's still a twinge of guilt. (It gets worse: Roxane Gay, who has like four jobs and writes books of her own, has read more than 900 books.) I started asking around; apparently lots of people had that friend on Goodreads: A high school classmate, a friend from an old job, whatever. I might've felt left out, but at least I wasn't alone.

I took my grievance to Goodreads itself. After writing to the company to lament that so many people seemed to have consumed the entire New York Times bestseller list in the time it took me to read one book, CEO/cofounder Otis Chandler offered sympathy, confessing that he only gets through about 20 books per year. "I wish I had time to read more," he wrote via email. "But with a busy job and three small children, I only have so much time." I felt better—then I remembered I read fewer books than Chandler in a given year and have no offspring to tend to.

Chandler's point wasn't to bookshame, though. "When a person joins," he continued, "they start to read more books." The site, then, serves as both a motivator and a recommendation engine for its 75 million users. People want to keep up with their friends, but through those friends they also discover books they want to read. That was definitely true—getting those Goodreads notifications definitely motivated me keep going, and I'd probably consumed more books since joining the site than I had before.

Then Chandler brought up the Goodreads Reading Challenge, a section of the site where users can set goals for themselves. In 2018, 2.9 million people on the service set personal goals for themselves, and to hear Chandler tell it, each December participants celebrate hitting their goals. "Our advice with the Reading Challenge is to set a personal goal that fits with what's going on in your life and type of books you like to read," he wrote. "We hear from our members all the time that they value it for helping them read more."

Solid plan. So, OK, I'm gonna do it. I might not log it on Goodreads, where one of my friends is somehow halfway through a 150-book goal, but I'm going to do it. Twenty-five books in 2018. This can happen.

Five minutes after I made this promise, I opened my email to find a Goodreads newsletter waiting for me. Squelching the desire to archive, I opened it. There it was, right at the top: Lizzy Goodman's Meet Me in the Bathroom, the chronicle of early-2000s rock 'n' roll life in New York I'd been "currently reading" for months. I'd shelved it during a move and forgotten that I only ever got one chapter in before being distracted by some novel. Or some Twitter beef. Probably some Twitter beef. So you're it, Meet Me in the Bathroom; my account claims I've read three books already this year (that can't be right, can it?), and the next 22 start with you. And then maybe that copy of Underground Railroad I've been toting around. A little more protein might be just what the doctor ordered.

Source

chanakyakripa

What I can offer here as a comment that Goodreads is obviously a good source of info about latest books, reviews and updates. But one must not feel disappointed or ashamed of the number of books read in a specified time. First its the quality issue. Then there is time factors. Its not how much you read but how well you read that matters. I for example cannot read more than 1 book at a time. And if I like it, I surely read it again. This time as a critique. So I never take reading challenges.

Mousetrap

I think whoever wrote this is just a little too worked up... you set your goal and work on it - why worry about how much others are reading? Not all of us have the same kind of leisure time and that's perfectly alright. And this goal is not like a life or death decision like Hunger Games, so... you manage to read 25 books cool, otherwise no big deal.

As for reading goals itself, it doesn't work for me, because you can't predict how the coming year, or for that matter, the coming week is going to be, so it's just a futile venture.

I do binge read whenever I get that kind of time...sometimes even more than one book a day. I've done that many times, and this month, I've been on a graphic novel reading spree. But reading at this pace on a regular basis? Impossible. It comes in phases and there's a long period when I don't read anything at all except something light like comics.

So, while I don't set reading challenges for myself, I do like to capitalize on free time and read as much as possible. If a book turns out to be good, I read it again at a more leisurely pace, and maybe a few more times later.  

cynic

I have been a member of a couple of groups at Goodreads and unfortunately, it is all about the numbers there. That is the reason they didn't work for me. Pretty much proves the point of the article.

Mousetrap

If it's all about numbers, it does sound like a silly thing. But, if you set a target like 50 books per year and go about with it, how's it going to not work? Its like a motivation, right? As in, are you encouraged to read more or match others' target...

cynic

Mousetrap 16-8-2018 11:16 AM
If it's all about numbers, it does sound like a silly thing. But, if you set a target like 50 books  ...

It is supposed to work like that. But not all of us have the luxury of time. I would not forego a large book I have been waiting to read or pick up a novella just to meet the target.

Mousetrap

cynic 16-8-2018 11:23 AM
It is supposed to work like that. But not all of us have the luxury of time. I would not forego a l ...

Curioser and curioser.... I have an ancient goodreads account that I might renew and snoop around to see what the deal is.

jhsurti

I wouldn't worry too much about my speed. I am a Goodreads member, I get updates from friends on their reading spree - one of them being a voracious reader to the extent that when I met him recently and asked him how he manages to read so many books, his reply - "People ask me what I did for living?"! Anyway, I get this updates, I come to know of the new reading material and that's it. I don't get bothered about the number at all. I usually set a target of say "I'll read 50 iPad pages of this book today" and if I manage to read 60, I am happy! It's WHAT I read that is more important to me than HOW MUCH I read.