You Dreamed of a Literary Mukbang – Goodreads and fast fiction

As we speed towards the end of the calendar year, the gentle *pings* coming from the apps fighting for room on your phone screen are urgently notifying you that yes, the time has finally come; ‘tis the season of retrospection of your media consumption. Spotify Wrapped, comprehensive Letterboxd stats, and the approaching deadline of this year’s Goodreads Reading Challenge. 

Its clickable banner, painted in an insistent violet hue, is plastered on the website’s interface across multiple tabs. It’s on the home screen, under your ‘currently reading’s, on your profile, sitting comfortably on the tag of last year’s challenge. And, until a few days ago, it was a purple stripe lined neatly against the top edge of the screen: ‘Quick Reads: catch up on your Reading Challenge with these short books.’

That’s right. You still have not met your reading goal for this year.

• But I read all those articles!
• We had sooo much to read for Philosophy of Science class!
• It’s not my fault Goodreads doesn’t have his really niche book which I read and loved. It’s about feminism and equal rights, by the way, and also, like, 2000 pages long. So if they did have it, it would count for four, or maybe even five books, okay?

Ah, but do not worry. Set aside your feeble and pathetic excuses and wipe away those tears of failing to meet yet another set of long-term goals, because Goodreads is here to help you, extending a benevolent arm of magnanimity to pull you through these trying times.

So you click on that banner. Immediately, you are transported to a page featuring a multimillion-dollar company masquerading as a living, breathing, speaking person, actually addressing you directly. It promises to ‘supercharge your 2024 reading challenge’ by compassionately compiling for you a list of a hundred titles of newly published novelettes (all available for quick and easy purchase, for what that’s worth). A blurry idea of a question passes your mind concerning the ordering of the books, but you can’t be bothered to entertain it. 

Now, do you want a book about art intersecting with themes of morality and gender, bound in an aesthetically pleasing high-contrast cover? Parade, by Rachel Cusk, is your perfect speed-dating match. Do you like reading fiction that falls tidily and obediently under the labels of ‘LGBT,’ ‘Historical’ and ‘Adult,’ which is also set in an inhospitable yet idyllic Caledonian landscape? Well, my friend of highly eclectic tastes, Goodreads has got you covered, because Carys Davies’ Clear is the right pick to satiate your vaguely specific scotophilic preferences. 

Don’t have the time to read any of the books listed to make it to your goal without reaching a crunch time period of elevated heart-rate and increased sweat production that entails desperately and mindlessly flipping through the pages of a random book with not even an iota of critical thought or enjoyment involved?

Well, that’s no problem at all, because Goodreads is here to sit you on its knee and stiffly pat you on the shoulder before offering you a number of consoling aphorisms, gently whispered into your ear in a mildly uncanny Alexa voice:

Critical thought doesn’t matter at all. Books don’t exist for emotional or even intellectual pleasure; they exist so you can log them in on our database and gulp down a sudden yet delicious shot of serotonin when your friend likes your status update of you ‘beginning to read’ 1984 for the nth time. It’s all for that quick taste of the almost erotic rush of exhilaration as you see the parenthesised number on your ‘read’ shelf rise. Goodreads, an extremely popular social cataloging website and Amazon subsidiary Wunderkind, is now your source of escapism. 

And thus, by pointing to your shiny 2,000 logged books as proof that you are the figurehead of anti-anti-intellectualism of your time, you become the very thing you swore to destroy.

So it is that you pick up Álvaro Enrigue’s You Dreamed of Empires, plucked quite carelessly and without much consideration beyond your liking of the analogous color-palette of an equine cover, and the daring second-person narrative voice, from out of Goodreads’ lump of advertisement-books. The book is divided into four parts: before Moctezuma’s nap, during his nap, after his nap, and the dream of Cortés, and it boldly reimagines the Spaniards arriving in America and meeting the Aztec emperor.

After passing a couple of pages which you didn’t really care for because they didn’t include any dialogue or sex or flowery descriptions of American Indian wealth, you scroll or leaf further through, anxious to see the dedications page or anything that might remotely suggest that the narrative is formally, officially over. In turn, you then have every right to rush over to Goodreads and log You Dreamed of Empires, already patting yourself on the back at your idea of a witty one-liner review, and contemplating the correct amount of stars to pair it with.

You have done it. Without properly noticing (really, it was only in the back of your mind this entire time), you have completed your Reading Challenge. You rose to the occasion and proved yourself an avid reader, a real reader, a Goodreader. You promptly thank your mother, father, dog, the rest of your extended family, and Goodreads, as tears stream down your cheeks, staining them with your mascara, while the mayor ascends the stairs to the stage to hand you the key to the City’s Library. 

‘Sweet Victory’ pulses in the background as you feel your consumer’s guilt melting away into warm gratification at the sight of the round, satisfying figure of your Reading Challenge goal being showered by colorful tinsel and animated confetti. You have won this challenge against time, the odds, against 2023, and against all of your loser friends who care about things other than fast fiction, the gluttony of the virtual literary equivalent of a timed eating competition, and not taking the time to ‘recover the sounds of the language,’ as Enrique puts it. 

And in the midst of all the clamor and celebrations, you can barely hear a voice from inside your head telling you about how this consumerist  reading culture is a direct product of modern-day capitalism as it emerged fueled by colonialist theft. But it was alright, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. You won the victory over yourself. You loved Goodreads.* And the voice in your head is overpowered by the Wunderkind telling you these things, like an answer to your speech of gratitude right then at the podium:

You’re welcome. You’re welcome for your list of 100 easily digestible books (which you can even order from Amazon right now if you want to. Delivery is free. Here’s a link). We’ve even included this one in our list. Look; it’s set in Mesoamerica, rewriting the history of the conquistadors so that they’re the ones who lose. It’s okay. It’s fine. You really don’t have to thank us. It’s just one book, anyway.

*Quote taken from the final lines of 1984 by George Orwell: ‘[…] But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.’