Goo Dreads
Once you've seen it, you can't unsee it
Ages and ages ago (2017, which I think we can all agree was several lifetimes ago), when my youngest child was seven, he caught a glimpse of my laptop screen and looked instantly befuddled.
“Why…why are you on a site called Goo Dreads?” he asked.
I’ve mentally pronounced Goodreads that way ever since.
There was a time when I loved to start January by gulping down several short novels, just for the joy of beginning a new year’s list. Booklists are among life’s simplest pleasures. Books you’ve read, books you want to read, books you are definitely absolutely finally going to read this year for SURE, books you like to give as gifts, books you’re hoping to get as gifts, books you’ve read to your kids, books everybody else should read to their kids, the very best books on your obsession topics, the very worst books on your obsession topics, books your spouse adored as a kid but you’ve never read and vice versa, books you wouldn’t read again if you were paid, books you have on hold at the library, books you owe the library money for, books about books, books you can’t believe are out of print, books you read when you’re sick, books you read when you’re supposed to be reading something else, books you’ve given away and then rebought, books you wish you’d written.
Last year was the year I slowed waaaay down, reading gigantic novels a morsel at a time, releasing myself from the internet-imposed notion of book math—keeping a numerical tally as if it meant anything significant. I still like to enter a number in the Goo Dreads reading challenge (even though I spend very little time on the site any more, for oh so many reasons), I guess because I’m highly susceptible to gamification? I enjoy fake challenges? I miss winning the big summer reading prize at the library? I know that book tallies are nothing more than the finger pointing at the moon. Moons, plural. No, wait: stars.
The stars are what matter. A whole galaxy of them within my reach, right here in this house alone. Sometimes I read posts naming star after star, stars worth traveling to, and I have to close my eyes. Even from here, the light is dazzling.
“Reading is untidy, discursive, and perpetually inviting.”
—Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
Several years in a row, Alan Bennett’s novella about the (imagined) reading life of the Queen of England was the book I reached for on January 1st, and not only because you can finish it in one sitting. The Uncommon Reader speaks to the way reading gets its hooks into you, wresting you from real life while simultaneously preparing you for it.
What she was finding also was how one book led to another, doors kept opening wherever she turned and the days weren’t long enough for the reading she wanted to do.
And it occurred to her (as next day she wrote down) that reading was, among other things, a muscle and one that she had seemingly developed. She could read the novel with ease and great pleasure, laughing at remarks, they were hardly jokes, that she had not even noticed before.
‘You don’t put your life into your books. You find it there.’
Delicious.
When I was digging through my blog to find out when, exactly, the Goo Dreads conversation took place,1 I happened upon an unrelated 2013 post from when Rilla was six.
Rilla discovered the search and request features at our library website. Here are the topics she asked to look up:
BIG BAD WOLF
X-RAY
LION
FIELD TRIP TO THE ZOO
FLEA ON MY BACK
FIFTY HUNDRED FLEAS
FIFTY HUNDRED BALLS
FIFTY HUNDRED
KIT
Twelve years later, and no publisher has yet to tap the FIFTY HUNDRED market.
I remembered it as a Rilla comment and was surprised to discover it was actually Huck.
"Goo dreads" is delightful.
For me the allure of book tallies isn't the numbers game, but the thrill of going back over the list at the end of the year and remembering all the book-friends I've made that I've already half-forgotten. Oh last year was the year I read Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God and No Longer at Ease-- way back in January. I'd almost forgotten. It's similar to looking at the year's family photos and recalling the field trips and vacations and museum outings. I'm such a sucker for book lists lined up neatly by year.
I remember you telling the Goo Dreads story before and that’s how I’ve been saying it in my head too.