So, I was pretty late to the party when it comes to this whole Goodreads deal, having just signed up about seven months ago, and OHMYGOD I'm in heaven. Seriously. A social networking site that revolves entirely around books; who in their right mind wouldn't love that? There are so many things that I love about this site. I love that it gives me a convenient way of tracking what I've read and when I've read it. I love the yearly reading goal you can set for yourself (mine is 52 books this year, which I'm currently three books ahead of schedule on. *fistpump*). I love that it gives me a sense of accountability about actually finishing every book I start - like, if I were going to read Gravity's Rainbow* privately, there's an excellent chance that I'd wimp out about 200 pages in, but if I announce that I'm doing it on the internet then I'll kind of feel obligated to finish. I love that you can easily see what your friends are reading, which makes my perpetual seeking of book recommendations so much easier. I love those book giveaways that I never ever win but which are oh-so-much-fun to enter. I love that never-ending book quiz thingy, even though more often than not it only serves to highlight the massive gaps in my past reading (yes, I probably should have been able to name the fairy king from A Midsummer Night's Dream but I haven't quite gotten around to that play yet, okay?).
Oddly enough, the one thing I don't really care about is the whole ratings and reviews feature, which are pretty much the biggest part of the whole site. It's interesting to see my friends' ratings of certain books so we can compare and contrast our views, but as a whole I just really don't care about it. Even setting aside the whole author-bullying scandals that have been plaguing them over the last few years, I've just never been a big fan of using reviews as a means to decide if I'm going to read/watch/listen to a certain product. I know my own tastes pretty well by now to decide on my own what I want to consume. And honestly, over the years I've enjoyed enough things that were critically decimated (yeah, I own a copy of the Johnny Depp Lone Ranger movie, you gonna judge me?!) and disliked enough things that were revered as masterpieces (lookin' at you, The English Patient) to figure out that, for me at least, the whole thing is just a waste of time. My tastes are never going to line up completely with what popular opinion says, so why even bother?
Lately I've figured out another reason why I don't fully trust reviews I see on user-based sites like Amazon and Goodreads. I don't know if this is true for the majority of Goodreads users or if I'm in the minority, but adding the whole social network aspect to reading has caused me to become a little compulsive about it. When I start reading a book I feel the need to log on RIGHT NOW and enter it in so I can keep up with my progress (and yes, so I can show it to the world as well). Similarly, when I finish a book I feel the need to log on RIGHT NOW and declare that I've finished it and give it a star rating, so I won't have that little unfinished, unrated book sitting in my profile taunting my OCD. Doing things that way provides me with instant gratification, but if I want to really give my truest opinion on a book, it's probably not the best way to go about it.
I started thinking about this a few days ago, while I was rereading The Road. If you ask me about The Road after my having read it a second time, I will probably talk your ear off about how it's one of the most perfect pieces of literature ever produced and everyone in the universe should read it. But that's most definitely not what I thought of it the first time I read it.
When I started my Goodreads account, I gave ratings to some of the books I'd read recently (i.e., the last year or so). The Road clocked in at four stars (after my most recent reading it's been upgraded to five, natch). At the time, though, I distinctly remember thinking that it didn't really deserve four stars. My most honest rating for it at the time would have probably been about a three; I think I convinced myself to upgrade it to four based on the fact that I knew it was considered to be a Very Important Book. I gave away my copy of the book to Goodwill shortly after I read it that first time. Usually when I give away a book, it's because I finish it and think to myself "Meh, that wasn't bad but I probably won't ever read it again." With The Road, though, my giving it away was more of an emotional decision. My thought process at the time was less "Well, that was okay but now I'm done with it" and more "Holy shit, I need to get this book away from me and never think about it again."
After my recent rereading and star upgrading, I perused some of the book's reviews on Goodreads. Most of the one and two star reviews mention several of the same issues I had with the book when I first read it, namely:
1) There's not really a plot to speak of and nothing much happens
2) Wtf is up with the punctuation?
3) The portrayal of other humans besides the man and the boy is sparse and dull
4) The dialogue is confusing/banal/etc
5) There are too many obscure antiquated words in use
6) No really, wtf is up with the punctuation?!
All complaints that I had after my first reading. Yet I didn't fully slip into negativity, and chose to grant it my four-star-that-was-really-a-three-star-rating, because I distinctly remember coming out of that first reading thinking that I'd definitely just experienced something, but I wasn't quite sure what it was or how I felt about it.
When I had first read The Road, it was the first book of Cormac McCarthy's that I'd ever read. Although I did have a passing knowledge of his style and punctuation issues** this was the first time I'd ever made an effort to make it through a whole book of his, and initially it was a struggle. Quite some time after my first reading of The Road, I decided to give McCarthy another shot and consumed No Country For Old Men and Child of God within a relatively short timeframe of each other. This bit of immersion into McCarthy helped bring me around to his bleak worldview and his punctuation in equal measure, and by the time I decided it was time to revisit The Road, I had a much better idea of what I was getting into.
Shortly before I started my recent reread I'd been discussing the book with a couple of my friends, and one of them told me that he viewed The Road more as a poem than a novel. I kept this in the back of my mind as I read it for the second time, and to my surprise I found myself agreeing. Instead of worrying about plot and secondary characters and dialogue, I let the book just sort of wash over me as a more abstract experience, and within this experience I finally found the depth of feeling that I'd only glimpsed the first time I read it. After my first reading I thought "Well that was...something." After my second reading I thought "This was the most powerful reading experience of my life."
I don't presume to know how many of the negative reviewers on Goodreads would have a similar experience to me. I don't know how many of them are familiar with Cormac McCarthy's other work*** or how many of them would ever feel the need to revisit The Road or if their opinion of it might change for the better if they chose to do so. But I do wonder about it. And, as this entire Road-based digression has all been a very roundabout way of saying, I find myself wondering that for every Goodreads rating and review I see. Have these opinions been formed after deliberation and consideration, or are they being made on the spur of a moment after just having finished a book, when emotions are still running high and articulate opinions may still be miles away. Yesterday I took a trip through my read shelf on Goodreads, and I found myself tinkering with some of my star ratings. There were books that, upon careful reflection, had more merit to them than I had originally thought when I rated them (Romeo & Juliet, I still don't particularly like you, but I have a begrudging respect for you). Conversely, there were books that I'd thought were the Coolest Book Ever when I'd first read them, which after my initial fangirl fires had cooled no longer seemed to shine quite as brightly in my eyes (Stephen King, I love you to death but in hindsight The Dead Zone really didn't deserve the five stars I'd initially lavished it with).
Like I said, I adore Goodreads. I think it's an awesome way to bring book lovers together and help them keep track of their reading, and possibly find new titles to read. But when you break it down, it ultimately is somewhat of a social networking site. And the whole "instant gratification" vibe that social sites carry with them probably isn't conducive to forming a solid opinion about a piece of literature. If others who use Goodreads find that the ratings and reviews help them find new things to read, that's cool with me, but you'll forgive me if I continue to put little stock in them.
*That particular challenge hasn't actually happened...yet. Stay tuned, though.
**My first experience with Cormac McCarthy was having picked up a used copy of All the Pretty Horses with every intention of reading it, then promptly flinging it aside with an "Oh, fuck this shit!" within a few pages when I realized that yes, this quotation mark business was going to be the norm for the entire book. That copy is still sitting in my library, incidentally, and now that I've developed a taste for McCarthy it will actually get read one of these days.
***Although based on how many of them were bringing up the lack of quotation marks in a surprised manner, I'd venture that for quite a few of them this was the first McCarthy book they'd read. Seriously, that's like being surprised when someone dies in a George R.R. Martin book. It's kind of their thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment