Australians Not Talking Much About Australia

It's great to find things that relate to your passion. It can feel like a wondrous miracle when you find things that combine two of your passions.  For example, Jack has become heavily involved with a Disney World Minecraft server.  He loves Disney World, and he loves Minecraft.  Here's two of his passions combined.  It's great because he's found friends who have something in common with him.

A few weeks ago I joined a GoodReads group for Australians AND people who are interested in Australia. Great! Those are two of my passions combined. Reading and Australia.

The only thing is, they very often talk about things that are not Australian.  So then I feel kind of stupid for being there.  Because they're all Australian, and I'm not. So I'm imagining them thinking, why is she here? They're probably not thinking that, but I'm insecure sometimes.

Or maybe they are thinking that.  

And maybe I'm a little disappointed because I want to have people that blab on and on about Australia.

But now that I think of it, I don't know if it's books I want to talk about.  

I want to talk about Home and Away and Offspring.

I want to talk about my favorite Aussie songs.

Maybe I wish people would comment on my blog and we can have deep discussions about imaginary Patrick and whether or not Tom and Pippa should be more apologetic to Sally about not taking her reservations about Dodge more seriously.  

Why don't I want to talk about Australian books?  I kind of have a tendency to forget what I've read.  

And you know what I'm noticing about GoodReads?  Well, that maybe it's not easy for people to talk about books in general.  Because what I mostly see on the message boards are games that are not exactly book related.  Or if there is a discussion about a book, it's usually along the lines of, Am I the only only one in the world who hated this book?

Sometimes I'm tempted to comment back. Yes. Every single person in the world loves this book except you.You're all alone in this big wide world.  

I did actually participate in a fairly interesting book discussion today. It was about that certain controversial scene at the end of Stephen King's It.

I've also participated in debates about Twilight which is sort of like debating abortion. People have very dogmatic opinions and aren't really interested in changing them. I keep telling myself it's best to walk away.  

Anyway. I love GoodReads, sometimes obsessively.  But I try to limit my time there.  Because although I love playing the games that have little to do with reading, and I love chatting with Australians not talking much about Australia, I want to make sure I still have time to actually read books.

  

 Sometimes I worry that GoodReads swallows up some readers.  You know, they love reading. They join GoodReads.  Then they're so busy adding friends to their friends list, playing word association games, adding countless books to their to-read list, but what they're not realizing is they hardly actually read anymore. Does that happen?  I don't know. I kind of think it probably does. I don't want to end up being one of those people.   

It's like how I was joking with Jack the other day—that when we're at Disney World, he's not going to want to go to the parks. He's going to find to sit in the apartment all day playing with his friends in pretend Disney World.