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Old 12-08-2009, 10:54 AM   #28
Elfwreck
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Quote:
Originally Posted by zacheryjensen View Post
I'd rather get a 40 character tweet from doctorow saying "Book Name by Author Name is fantastic!" and since I respect his opinion, I'll check out the book on my own.
Me too--but that's because I know Doctorow's opinions from longer writing.
I know that anything Amalthia tags as "instant rec!" is worth reading.

But that doesn't mean I can skip around Twitter looking for the phrase "book rec." And while I trust Doctorow's recs for sci-fi and geeky books, and Amalthia's for fanfic, that doesn't mean either of them would've led me to Lewis Hyde's The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property. I might've found it by spending time on philosophy discussion boards--but I'm not mostly interested in discussing philosophy; it was recommended to me by my religious teacher.

Finding good writing in fields you're directly interested in is relatively easy. Finding good stuff in a category you've never read before is much harder; you don't know whose recs to trust.
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