Yes, I was referring to Aaron’s comment, but not saying that anyone wanted to intentionally canonize this list, but rather take on a life of its own. I agree with much of your comment (though still think the central point of my criticism is a valid and as a community we need to be more mindful about this).
To clarify my comment to Michael: I was excited to see him share his list because I’d like lots of people to share their lists, and I think that people are more likely to share once they’ve seen someone else do it. I don’t think Michael is a particularly good judge of books or anything like that—the whole point is to get a broad set of viewpoints on a variety of books.
If someone ever compiles all the lists together and tries to establish some kind of “canon” based on that, I’d be wary, but this personal list created by a single person to describe his own reading experiences doesn’t feel at all canonical to me.
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Possible point of confusion: In my comment, I said that I hoped Michael’s list would become one of the most-upvoted in the “EA Books” tag. That’s because I expect that tag to be used by people looking for book recommendations, and I expect this post to be useful to them, because it recommends many books.
I’d hope that a more diverse or comprehensive list would get even more upvotes in the tag—I just want posts with tags to be useful to people looking at those tags.
Yes, I was referring to Aaron’s comment, but not saying that anyone wanted to intentionally canonize this list, but rather take on a life of its own. I agree with much of your comment (though still think the central point of my criticism is a valid and as a community we need to be more mindful about this).
To clarify my comment to Michael: I was excited to see him share his list because I’d like lots of people to share their lists, and I think that people are more likely to share once they’ve seen someone else do it. I don’t think Michael is a particularly good judge of books or anything like that—the whole point is to get a broad set of viewpoints on a variety of books.
If someone ever compiles all the lists together and tries to establish some kind of “canon” based on that, I’d be wary, but this personal list created by a single person to describe his own reading experiences doesn’t feel at all canonical to me.
*****
Possible point of confusion: In my comment, I said that I hoped Michael’s list would become one of the most-upvoted in the “EA Books” tag. That’s because I expect that tag to be used by people looking for book recommendations, and I expect this post to be useful to them, because it recommends many books.
I’d hope that a more diverse or comprehensive list would get even more upvotes in the tag—I just want posts with tags to be useful to people looking at those tags.