Resolution: Recommend more books
I amnot one for New Year’s resolutions. I amparticularly not a fan of resolutions that aim to end some practice that is perhaps questionable— eating ice cream three (OK, five) nights aweek— but is not overtly harmful to ourselves or others.
Sure, we should seek self-improvement, but not necessarily through abnegation, not only because denying ourselves that which bring us pleasure is un-fun but because the likelihood of following through on our resolutions goes down considerably.
So if we’re going to resolve to do something, we should resolve to do things that bring us pleasure and, if we’re lucky, may bring pleasure to others aswell.
Everyweek I receive more requests for book recommendations than I can share in this space, where I am limited to three. Each week (first priority goes to those who include their name and hometown) I see many more readers I think I could help.
Over the years, I’ve considered sending individual emails to requesters I couldn’t get to in the column, but that seems weird. People didn’t send in requests to get a private email out of the blue back to their inboxes, and besides it’s much more fun to share these things in a communal way.
Readers who don’t send in requests tell me that they’ll sometimes find a new book by seeing requests by others similar to what they’re reading.
Formy New Year’s resolution, conceived in the spirit of doing more of what I enjoy and find value in, I’ve resolved to figure out howto offer more book recommendations in a publicly accessible forum.
As awesome as itwould be for the Tribune to give over three or four pages of the Sunday paper to yours truly so I can fulfill every request, everyweek I’m told it is not practical. Fortunately, there is a solution that’s been sitting in front ofmy face. In fact, I wrote about it just a fewweeks ago: Substack.
While in that column I expressed my concerns about writers whowere once part of larger collective entities finding it more attractive and lucrative to run solo shops, I think it can serve nicely as an ancillary outlet for additional content, so that’s what I’m going to do.
I’m pleased to introduce The Biblioracle Recommends (biblioracle.substack.com).
To start, I’m going to use it as a place to share additional recommendations based on lists of requests once or twice or more times aweek, depending on the volume of requests and howmuch spare time I find myself having.
As long as you can find my column here, the Substack site will be free to all who care to sign up with their email. It will be additional, an adjunct, the commentary on the DVD, if you will.
I’m fond of the idea of an archive of submissions and recommendations, a repository of what people are reading when sounds interesting to me.
If there’s sufficient enthusiasm, perhaps we can have a little more fun, with readers weighing in onmy choices in discussion forums or perhaps offering alternative suggestions.
I could envision a future of featuring a forgotten book everyweek, maybe author interviews, essays or stories by others— who knows?
I don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver, as seems to be the risk for all New Year’s resolutions, so we’ll start simple and see howit goes.
So please sign up. It’s simple, free, and you can opt out any time.