Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Goodreads Anonymous?

Hi, my name is Courtney, and I'm addicted to Goodreads. (Hi Courtney!)

Last night, as I was scrolling through maybe one of the best things to happen to social media, I realized I have a problem. I was sitting next to my boyfriend on the couch, but after several minutes he was long forgotten. My eyes were suctioned to my computer screen. On my Safari browser, I had over eighty tabs open. I wish I was joking. Each tab was filled with a new list to browse through, or a book to check out and add to my 'to-read' list. Yes, that's the number of books on my list up there. SEVEN HUNDRED. And growing every day.

That's the crazy addicting thing about Goodreads. It started with me looking for books similar to my favorite memoir, A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown. It lead me to lists about Troubled Youth, Drug Addiction, Best Memoirs Ever, etc. So of course, I start opening all of these tabs of lists, and then these lists are filled with at least a hundred books, so I start opening more tabs with books that look interesting, and before I know it, three hours of my evening is gone. This website is like a black hole.

Boyfriend says, "maybe you should limit yourself to only looking at ten books a day." I laughed out loud right in his face. Does he know who I am? Doesn't he see that I currently have over eighty tabs open on my computer, each one bringing me a new book to add to my incredibly sized 'to-read' list? It's pretty flooring/overwhelming to think of how many books there are in the world for me to read at any given time. This year I've read forty-seven books (forty-eight if I can finish Cancer Ward).

700 divided by 48 = 14.58. That means it would take me FOURTEEN AND A HALF YEARS to read all of the books that are currently on my list of books to read, if I continue to read at this pace. That's not even counting all of the books that I have on my book shelf that I haven't input into my account. That's not even counting all of the pretty covers at the library/book stores that I have yet to even pick up and recognize the name of. That's not even counting biographies of interesting people I'm bound to want to read some day. I'm sweating just thinking about it.

If there is not a Goodreads anonymous group out there, dammit, I'll start one. I know I need it. Or, I can just peacefully sign my life away to books and reading, which doesn't sound too bad either.

Anyone have a Goodreads account? Add me! You can click on the Goodreads widget on the side and it should take you somewhere near my profile.

2 comments:

  1. I just signed up for goodreads after reading this article and I love it! It is so addicting and a never ending rabbit hole but what a great resource for book lovers!

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    1. so true! i fell into a black hole of goodread's the other day, and i need my friends and boyfriend to talk me out of it. what's funny is when i'm looking at my 'to-read' list, I can see what kind of lists I got into - books about health, books about troubled teens, true crime, etc :)

      what are some of your favorite lists or type of books to look into?

      **sorry I am replying to this so late. my computer was being sassy and wouldn't let me reply to comments properly on here. but after a software update, i am finally able to get caught up!

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