I joined Goodreads a few years ago, but I'd been horribly stagnant. After all, I can barely handle Facebook, Blogging, and Twitter. Google+ has become an odd country where (mostly) strangers add me to their little Google crop circles daily. (And thus I run farther and farther way. Might as well call it Google negative bajillion, at this rate.)

Anyway, sometime in the last two weeks, my book mysteriously popped up on Goodreads. I didn't put it there. My reaction?

I stared at the "book cover image not on hand" icon. Then I twitched and proceeded to dive for the safety of my comforter.

Holy freaking macaroni, my book is up on Goodreads. 

So then, I did what any normal person would do. I visited my book on Goodreads, like, forty times that day to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Then, another weird thing started to happen.

People started adding it to their to-read list.

What the--?

I know, I know. You're thinking, "Lydia, be reasonable. Some people actually might want to read it."

But "to-read" possessed way more of a "will-check-out-your-underwear-drawer-and-medicine-cabinets" kind of vibe.

Anyway, after I unstuck myself from the bedding, I put up a blurby short something about the book (90% of which is taken directly from my original query--so yeah, if you ever wanted to see my query, that's pretty much it, minus one paragraph with spoilers), started adding friends that I should have added a million hours ago, and began Goodreads obsessing.

THE FOUNTAIN is on the YA Novels of 2013 list, and it's hovering at #50. What qualifies for the buoyancy of 50, rather than 150, or 5? Apparently a mathematical equation that involves voting it up, and how many people want "to-read". However, I'm convinced that the Goodreads fairies came up with this far more accurate equation to determine ranking:


[(# marked "to-read") + (#votes up)]  ÷ [(facial pore size / general anxiety level)]
- [(time spent driving over speed limit) ÷ (probability of showering by noon that day)]  = RANK

Oh yes. You know it's right.

All I know is, Goodreads is going be the death of me. 

So I am vowing to stop the madness. It's cutting into my writing time, adding unnecessary stress to my life, and making what little hair I have fall out.  No more checking GR forty times a day and no more looking at ranks.  

I am not a number.

I'm going to use Goodreads for the good things. I've been cataloging my TBR pile so I can access it when it's time to buy a new book. If you have written a book that I haven't added, please let me know. 

And it's been fun finding my Goodreads friends (er, mostly you guys, my bloggy friends) and seeing what you guys are reading. That is muy awesome and I'm finding new books to read that way.

So. Do you do Goodreads? How much of your online life does it occupy?

p.s. I don't do reviews on GR. I'll explain this behavior in another post someday.
p.p.s. I vow to never respond to good or bad reviews, on GR or anywhere else.