Follow, Fan, or Friend? Reading, Rating, and Reviewing in the GR World…

There was a show on PBS decades ago celebrating and encouraging reading. It was called Reading Rainbow and starred LeVar Burton, who’d previously played a young Kunta Kinte in the Roots mini-series, and went on to play Lt Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation. (Since my kids are all grown, that’s about all the TV trivia I know.)

A TV show promoting reading might seem paradoxical to some. In fact, I knew parents who didn’t allow their children to watch television at all because it was considered an addictive junk food for the senses. How could something that would distract one from reading promote it at all? I knew others who didn’t put any restrictions on their kids in terms of viewing, or of anything else. Most of us tried to go for a balanced approach.

Despite the competing parental philosophies among our group of friends – or perhaps because of them - our children all seemed to grow up with a balance of respect for reading, popular culture, and tolerance of alternate ideas. I thought of Reading Rainbow recently, and the issues that we wrestled with when our kids were young, when considering my experience since joining Goodreads just under four months ago. One mother’s dismissal of the program had been that it didn’t offer anything that a good librarian couldn't. There is much truth in that, but what she didn’t see in those days before social media is that there is power in peer groups, even where individuality is celebrated. In the show, children talked about books they liked. LeVar Burton introduced the kids’ reviews portion of the episode by saying, “But you don’t have to take my word for it…”

I’ve always been rather introverted by nature. I’m at the point where I can pass as an extrovert at work or at home, but until I joined Goodreads, I generally did not interact much with people I didn’t know. I have a separate Facebook account that I’d gotten years ago because that was the only way to consistently interact with some far-flung friends and family members. But I only friended those I knew or had been introduced to by those I knew very well.

I heard about the benefits of Goodreads for both reader and writer, so I thought I might give it a try. I had belonged to various book clubs over the years, but came to dread having to go to the meetings. (I have no idea why; I’m just a homebody, I guess.) I liked the idea of being to share perspectives on books and still be able to have my non-working time at home to putter in the garden and not have to show up anywhere at a given place and time. And as a hobbyist writer, I wanted a place where I could find others like me who wanted to give our stories a place in someone’s imagination in exchange for offering a place for theirs in our own.

I found all those things in GR, and so much more. I didn’t really know anyone when I joined, but after joining groups, reading reviews and blogs, and making the odd, tentative posting to a discussion topic, I found myself with followers, friends, and fans. My goal of having at least one new person a year read part of a story I wrote was met fairly early on. With no more worries about that, I found myself reading a wider range of styles, settings, voices, and perspectives in three months than I’d have come across in three decades otherwise. I’ve read genres that I had no idea existed, such as paranormal romance. I’ve read genres that I didn’t think would interest me, such as paranormal romance – or romance of any kind – as well as books targeted towards middle school kids, books targeted toward aficionados of Steppes history, and books that fit in no defined genre to date. I’ve had message conversations with writers, which is happily mind-boggling in itself.

I must confess some puzzlement as to the GR etiquette of when to follow as opposed to friend or fan. I assumed that if I liked an author’s work, I’d be a fan. But that seems to mean blogs too, which makes sense, I suppose. That's a writer's work, but it's a bit weird to be a fan of a writer whose books I haven't read. So, I try to read books of those whose blogs I like to read.

If I like a reader’s reviews, I follow them, which also makes sense.

I feel a little awkward with the whole friend thing, and when that’s ok to do. I go back and forth between “oh, let’s follow or fan a while first, while we get to know each other better”, and the straight out, “Sure, life’s short. Let’s friend; what does that mean, by the way?”

But as I read various group discussions, particularly writers’ support forums, I became a little neurotic. Even while believing firmly that the world is a rainbow of ideas and opinions with validity, I became more and more worried about whether I was wrong in rating the way I did or reviewing the way I did, or especially writing the way I did. The readers groups I belonged to weren’t concerned about most of these things. Readers, who didn’t self-identify as writers as well, seemed to have no problems in being savvy consumers. They knew how to get the books they wanted and liked, and apparently read, rated, and reviewed to their hearts content.

Writers, on the other hand, seemed determined to scare the hell out of each other. They fretted that someone had to rescue poor innocent readers from buying books that they wouldn’t like. They fretted about the quality of some self-published writers reflecting poorly on all of them. They fretted that with all the competition of new writers publishing, readers would evaporate, forgetting that writers themselves were presumably readers too, and theoretically read more books than they wrote over a lifetime.

Some writers fretted about other people's cover art, or their proofing, or their rating & reviewing inclinations. Some bullied each other. Others were convinced they were being bullied by fellow authors. It was hard occasionally to figure out who was right, but I found it interesting that the readers, whose welfare the writers were vowing to protect, seemed happy enough to get along with each other and share ideas and favorite stories. (The only thing I ever saw close to the whole writing quality issue was a posting in a reading group that asked, almost apologetically, what was meant by a poorly written book and whether it was ok to like something declared to be that.)

I even read where reviews by another author didn't count, nor should a reader review an author they were GR friends with. I even saw where a writer should not thank a reader for a review, or have any contact at all. When I read that posting, I freaked out a little. I thought of the writers I’d met since being on Goodreads, and all the exchanges back and forth since I read their books, which ended up in a friendship. “Oh, my god,” I fretted to myself. “What if I’ve ruined their reputations with my reviews and ratings?!”

I saw a dizzying array of standards that books should meet before I could give them a four or a five star rating. If I had any integrity or concern for standards, I should be giving them all a three at best, or none at all. And for those who read a book of mine, God forbid that I should read one of theirs. That implies shady deals, rather than the mutual interest and inclinations that we might have naively assumed.

I suppose if I were conscientious person, I’d have fretted longer. Instead, I gave it a long bit of thinking to be fair to each of the various viewpoints. Then I left most of the writers groups. To be fair, they're for those who want to be professional writers, which I have no desire to be, and they're designed to encourage each other to reach a high standard for everyone's benefit. For that, I am grateful, and now that I'm not reading them, I can forgive a bit of condescension on their part if they can forgive the urge on my part to give them a few lessons in how to assess a book's quality before buying. Apparently, some don't seem to know and appear convinced that no one else does either. (Ok, maybe I haven't totally forgiven the condescension yet; I'm working on it though, I swear.)

I went back to just reading and enjoying all the lovely interactions with writers and readers from around the world. I truly believe in a reading rainbow of sorts, and we all have our place in it. Even so, it’s hard to the observer to say where one hue ends and another begins; the colors all blend at their borders. Was it Herman Melville who said, “We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.”? So, I suppose it’s good that we listen to each other occasionally and fret from time to time. By being open to others, I’ve been exposed to new horizons, new genres, new perspectives, new challenges, and new friendships. But I’ve also learned that being too open to other people’s notions, especially those that make no sense in my experience, can cause more angst than I care to have at this point in my life. So, I think it’s ok to close oneself off occasionally. But you don’t have to take my word for it...