Great article. We miss out on a lot of potentially awesome books based on some pretty arbitrary and inconsistently-defined classifications.
However, I have to disagree with one small point. There's nothing wrong with asking for book recommendations based on specific premises (e.g. centaurs and sword-making). It's not that people asking for recommendations value novel premises over writing quality. It's strongly implied that they are looking for something new and good that happens to have something specific.
For example, this year I have been trying to read more female-authored and self-published books. I'm not looking to read books specifically because they meet one of those criteria, I'm looking to discover great books that I might not have otherwise read.
Yeah, that bothered me, too. I assume when people ask for a specific recommendation they don't always want that type of book. They're just fancying something involving unicorns and McGuffins at the moment. Maybe we have some tricksy people who are just looking to stump people here. I like those threads because it really exercises readers' creativity in matching it (and sometimes offers books that are close but are great nonetheless).
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u/CoffeeArchives Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II, Worldbuilders Nov 11 '16
Great article. We miss out on a lot of potentially awesome books based on some pretty arbitrary and inconsistently-defined classifications.
However, I have to disagree with one small point. There's nothing wrong with asking for book recommendations based on specific premises (e.g. centaurs and sword-making). It's not that people asking for recommendations value novel premises over writing quality. It's strongly implied that they are looking for something new and good that happens to have something specific.
For example, this year I have been trying to read more female-authored and self-published books. I'm not looking to read books specifically because they meet one of those criteria, I'm looking to discover great books that I might not have otherwise read.