alt Hacker NewsFor someone who wants to sell the idea of not wasting time on reading, you're trying to waste a lot of time with your comment. You wasted mine for sure so I'll hopefully help somebody else with my short comment:
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- op basically says: don't pay attention to recommendation lists
- they assume you plan on reading all books recommended there or none
- they do not present an realistic alternative to finding books you might like
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Especially the last point is what I missed from your comment because it is actually a good idea to browse through other peoples recommendations to find similarities in taste.
Like in this list, I looked at the SciFi section and didn't find Neal Stephenson. Which, for me, is a sign of good quality together with other books I've already read. There are other books I have not even heard about. I might check them out and it would be a logical thing to do. Nothing wrong about it and chances are good that I might like it. They are certainly better than a wild guess.
There are 32 sci-fi books listed. Let's suppose you have read half of them, and you read 1 book each week. You've now just got your list for the next four months. Congratulations!
But wait, there's another list out there you're going to find tomorrow. And then another list, and another, and another, and they all have this same quality of having some books you've read and like, and nothing by Neal Stephenson. Then, when you're in the book store you see a book called "100 Sci-Fi Books To Read Before You Die", and you note it has these qualities but there are 80 books in there you've not read yet.
If you're busy pulling a sub-list together, you're doing the thing I'm suggesting: you're editing and curating, not just seeing the list in its own right. I'm definitely not suggesting you take wild guesses - note the magazines I read to find my own "next thing", and even that method is problematic.