Word After Word

I can’t do Good Reads right now.

My former students keep telling me I will love it. And I’m sure I would! I think it’s a wonderful thing and I am happy it exists but I can’t take on another password. I don’t want any more passwords for anything. I liked passwords when I was seven and I had an idea it would be cool to let people in my room who knew the password.

I do want to know what my friends and students are reading and I am incapable of reading a book and not telling people who might like it all about how much better the world is because we have this book. (I shudder when I think back on my obnoxious Nathaniel and the Pilgrims phase. The Shadow Divers obsession. My ongoing crush on Floyd Skloot. I drive everyone I love crazy with Good Reads.) But I just can’t sign up for a Program right now.

I want time to read good reads and time to call you on my phone with a dial and no call waiting and ask you what you are reading. Or not. Sometimes I think this great pleasure—talking about books we love, spreading the word—loses much of its richness and value when it’s posted, clubbed, defined, anthemized, registered.

Let’s just talk and be friends and have “my space” be the living room where we talk about books and food and basketball and boys and everything else that is good, no password needed, just come on in.