“This has been on the ol’ To-Read shelf for over 10 years, and I’m a stupid idiot asshole for not reading it sooner.
It’s a little bit of what we call Kmart realism, gritty, blue collar shit, mixed with the tiniest hint of magical realism, which is that there is speculation throughout about whether the dads of Maple Rock, a suburb of Detroit, actually all up and left their families to go to The Moon.
Whether or not they went to The Moon, they’re definitely gone without a trace, and the young boys step into their dads shoes a little earlier than planned. The barkeeper at one particular bar lets 16 year olds drink, maybe because he figures why not, maybe because he’s got dementia and confuses the kids with their fathers. There’s more than a little Mrs. Robinson going on for a bit there. Things are hectic, yet…not.
We’ve all hit up a coming-of-age book before, we all turn into our fathers, etc., and this goes down those roads, but it’s a fine, fine book about turning into our fathers and understanding why, given the option, some of them lit out for The Moon, never to return.
It’s nice to find hidden gems on the to-read list. I guess that’s why we keep them, right? Because we think a book sounds good, so we throw it on the list to not forget it. But then the list becomes its own whole THING. Like you start to wonder whether you’ll get through it in your lifetime, even if you stopped adding to it right now and dug in hard.
Sometimes you go through the list and it’s like, “What the fuck was I thinking?” Or you’re like, “I know I read this one book by this dude that I really liked, but maybe I should’ve just added, like, one other one instead of everything he’d ever written, like I might forget.”
I toy with deleting the to-read sometimes. I think, damn, wouldn’t that be freeing? Just start as though I’ve never made a to-read list in my life and pick out the first thing I come across that looks good, read it, then move onto the next only after finishing whatever I’m on. It seems like a simpler, better life.
But I guess Dean Bakopoulos has given me some faith that my to-read list isn’t all bad. It’s not all a trap, right? Maybe there are more gems in there, waiting to be uncovered.
And maybe Goodreads will just cease to exist one day, and then I’ll have to figure it all out again. Maybe that’d be a relief in a way. I mean, it’d be shitty at first, but I’d recover. You would, too.
Should we all do it? Just all delete our to-read lists together? Should it be an annual…maybe like every 5 years holiday? Where we say, “Look, I didn’t get to it in 5 years, I’m probably not getting to it ever?” Maybe clear our bookshelves that way, too? Our kindles?
If we decided to do this, who would be the first one to jump? I feel like the first person, it’d be like cliff diving, and everyone else swore they’d jump too, but you’re looking back, and holy shit, everyone’s still standing on solid ground. Betrayal!
But maybe that’s just paranoia.
I don’t know. Let’s think about this more, me and you. Let’s consider the possibilities.”