Current Enthusiasms #6: letterboxd

Earnest recommendations.

Keisai Eisen, Daikoku with an Abacus and a Woman with a Rat Running up Her Arm, 1828. Before letterboxd, you had to keep track of the movies you’d watched on an abacus.

I joined Letterboxd. You either know what it is or you don’t. My niece told me to, so I did. She’s a teen, at the age where she’s eager to watch movies and read books and buy records (yes, records) and piece together the story of who she is. I respect that adolescent impulse to declare yourself this kind of person.

It was Christmas Day when I signed up. We had flown to California that day, and on the plane I watched two movies: Five Easy Pieces and Where Is the Friend’s House? How perfect that I could then visit Letterboxd and tell everyone (well, my niece, the only person who follows me there) that I’m the kind of person who watches Criterion Classics on the plane.

Years ago, when I published my first book, my editor made me join Goodreads. Same idea; read a book, note that you’ve read it, assign it a star rating. That editor scolded me, later, for rating a book that she published 3.5 stars. So I went back and changed its rating to five stars. I’ve been using Goodreads for the last eight years. I rate every book five stars, because, you know, congratulations to everyone who has ever written a book. I also rate every movie five stars on Letterboxd, even this idiotic movie called Dear Zachary that I do not recommend to anyone.

I like keeping a record of all the books I’ve read. But of course, it’s not complete; not only does it preclude everything I read before 2016, I often read books and forget to log them. Same problem with Letterboxd; I was urged to choose my four favorite films, and I did, but I watched them before I ever made the account. I’m not going to go back in time and account for the fact that I’ve seen The Godfather like some kind of loser. (That is not one of my four favorite films. Those are Safe, Birth, Short Cuts, and Personal Shopper. I was once asked this question on camera and drew a blank and named two Woody Allen movies. I’m sure the publicist I was working with at the time was thrilled.)

I don’t know why I like keeping these lists. I do know that many people do. Everyone loves to show everyone else the songs they’ve listened to most during the year, as compiled by Spotify or Apple or whatever. We all just love our data, I suppose, or our data is inextricable from our selves. This is the kind of person I am, we tell everyone, even though we know it’s only part of the truth. Real talk, I might like the movie Baby Boom more than I like Personal Shopper.

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