Am I missing something? On December 26, Goodreads tells me that not one, not two, but five of my friends rated Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. On the day after Christmas, five people, independent of one another, thought, “Hey, you know what I haven’t done lately? Told the world what I think about Franz Kafka. I better get on that pretty quick”?
I’d put this down as some kind of glitch or bug, but then I’d expect all the ratings to be identical, and they’re not. I’ll admit, I haven’t been paying much attention to Goodreads lately, beyond using it to keep track of the books I’m currently reading (which you’ll find in the sidebar, somewhere), but it seems a little weird.
I’m also a little ashamed to say I’ve never read The Metamorphosis myself*. I should probably remedy that one of these days. I do have a complete Kafka collection laying around somewhere…
* “In his novel Changing Places, David Lodge describes a literary parlor game called ‘Humiliations’ in which participants confess, one by one, titles of books they’ve never read. The genius of the game is that each player gains a point for each fellow player who’s read the book—in other words, the more accomplished the reader, the lower his or her score. Lodge’s winner is an American professor who, in a rousing display of one-downmanship, finally announces that he’s never read Hamlet.” – Jodi Kantor, The Literary Critic’s Shelf of Shame
Edited to add: I have read Hamlet. It’s the one with the ghost, right? Joe Public loves the ghost.
Hamlet is the one by Shakespeare, right?