Goodreads Reviews of Odell

Image: https://hurryslowly.co/jenny-odell/

Here’s what people in this class had to say on Goodreads about Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing. They’re in the order received them. Enjoy!

• Gianna S
• Katie D
• Nicole S
• Lauren C
• Joshua G
• Gwyneth C
• Ethan P
• Stuart A
• Suneil H
• Cameron H
• Matt M
• Miranda A
• Cheryl K
• Tyler M
• Spencer S
• Kale S
• Soren S
• Patrick S
• Andrew P
• Nick C
• Hannah S
• Annie W
• Hoda Q
• Robert M
• Andy C
• Dale B
• Matt T
• Angel C
• Katie O
• Giovanni B
• Michael R
• Brandon B

Writing 6: Goodreads Review

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Please finish reading How to Do Nothing, and then post a brief review of it to Goodreads.com.

Goodreads is a site that lets users catalogue books they’ve read, or want to read, as well as to read reviews by other users. Accounts are free to set up, but the site is owned by Amazon, so it is pretty cluttered with ads. Still I find it an easy way to keep track of the books I’ve read. I think you might too.

Let me offer my own Goodreads review of Odell as an example of the kind of thing you might write. I wrote it several months before I started thinking about this course, so I didn’t intend it as an example, but I think it will work reasonably well as one. It runs about 200 words, so I’d encourage you to shoot for somewhere between 150–250. (Most Goodreads reviews are shorter, although some run very long indeed.)

Let me stress: Your review does not have to be positive. I like Odell’s book a lot. (I’d never assign a book I didn’t think other people would enjoy reading; life is too short.) But I’m interested in the uses you make of Odell’s work, not in whether you share my admiration for her or not.

My goals in this assignment are to give you a deadline for finishing Odell, to provide you with an opportunity to sum up your thinking about her book, to learn about Goodreads, and, frankly, to give you a bit of a breather in a busy course. Because the week after this (9/29), you’ll need to turn in the first draft of Essay One, which will be the most important moment in the course. to that point So I also urge you to read the Essay One assignment, and to contact me with any questions you might have about what I am asking you to do in it.

Deadline

Tues, 9/22, 4:00: Post your review of Odell to Goodreads.

Important: Once you have posted your review, please email me a link to it, so I can read it and give you credit for your work!

I also think it might be helpful if you have a chance to talk about Odell before drafting Essay One. So I’ll send out a Doodle poll to see if we can set up a kind of book club meeting on How to Do Nothing sometime on Wednesday, 9/23, or Thursday, 9/24. Please respond if you’d like to be part of it.