The Giddiness of Lists

"And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs..." Umberto Eco

This week's things encompassed four tasks, which were collectively grouped under the heading of "social reading," the basic idea being that in contemporary society we have moved from in-person discussions of reading to an online format that capitalizes on the sharing feature so characteristic of today's social media.

Essentially, we were to create a user profile in our library catalogue, create a list of items using the social sharing features of said catalogue, comment upon books in the catalogue, and then find users with similar interests and follow them so that we can hear more of their recommendations in the future.

I'm torn. I am enthusiastic about the ability of social media to connect us to others we would never otherwise normally meet, for instance, I followed a woman in Edmonton whose views on economics mirrored my own. However, I question whether there is any real connection made by following someone with whom you will never dicuss a title face-to-face.

One suggested use of social reading was to join Goodreads, where you can rate and review titles and "find out what your friends are reading." I can do that by asking them. I meet with a lovely group of ladies every six weeks to laugh, eat, drink, and for at least a brief period of time discuss a title one of us has selected. It's a time to bond and share and resonates with a richness that I find lacking in online "sharing." To me, sharing involves a back and forth, a give and take, rather than a list of all the books I personally read and all the thoughts I personally think. 

 

 

I can appreciate the reader's advisory aspect of these sites, as in "I found someone who thinks similarly to me and therefore I'll give a title they liked a whirl." We want lists to tell us what to read because they help us avoid information overload. In an era where the internet has made it possible to access books from most of the world's archives and libraries, countless magazines and newspaper articles, as well as a litany of self-published titles, we want someone to direct us through the limitless abundance of information in our time. However, sometimes the best part of reading a title recommended by someone whose reading interests lay outside your comfort zone is discovering you like something you didn't previously know you enjoyed.

 

I am fascinated by the listing aspect so prevalent on sharing sites and on the internet in general. Want to know 10 tips to survive a zombie apocalypse? A quick Google search returns 353,000 such lists populating the internet. The Top 10 superfoods nets you a cool 7,530,000 results. If you want to go a little meta you can even find lists of quotes about why people like lists: http://www.buzzfeed.com/aaronc13/7-quotes-from-author-umberto-eco-on-why-people-love-lists

 

Umberto Eco points out that the open-ended quality of lists hints at an infinity that draws us in and dazzles us but also notes lists can be dangerous because they embody control and exclusion. As a student of English literature in my younger days I learned that by saying "these are important books," we create an unintentional binary that implies there are books that need not be read, titles that are less deserving of our finite time and energy.

 

For my part this week, I created a list of titles that The American Library Association announced as the top books, video and audio books for children and young adults. The intended result is that I will read the award winners and further my professional knowledge base as a Children's Librarian but the unintended effect is that, like a ripple radiating outward from a stone splashing into water, I reinforce a hierarchy of books without examining at a deeper level the awards committee and any biases they may have (for instance, perhaps it's worth noting in the list description that only titles considered American are in the running as the top books for youth). It's a double-edged sword: these are quality books that I would like to read, and like-minded individuals may wish to be pointed in their direction, but by repeating the notion that these titles are worthy of attention I also unconsciously redirect people away from equally wonderful books written at home and abroad. 

 

Eco sees the list as a creator of culture, visible across history and throughout literature, but he is also very aware that lists pin things down and give an artificial sense of permanency when everything in life is constantly changing. I would venture to say that creating lists and sharing recommendations is both a blessing and a curse. We are each of us changing every day we wake and breathe and process our worlds, and recommendations simultaneously cage us and set us free. I have always been a fan of reading reactions to canonical literature but also knowing the books to which they are reacting. So I suppose my take-home lesson from this week's activities is that social reading serves a purpose, although it is one that should be questioned and interrogated from time to time to see if it is indeed serving us well or misleading us, based on the sum total of who we are at that moment. All I know is that in less than two weeks I'll be exercising my Luddite ways and celebrating good books, good wine, and good companionship--in person--while discussing The Rosie Project with the gals.