Rachel Cordasco has a Ph.D in literary studies and currently works as a developmental editor. When she's not at her day job or chasing three kids, she's writing reviews and translating Italian speculative fiction. She runs the website sfintranslation.com, and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.
Whenever someone publishes a bookish list, it seems, the usual grumpy people get all huffy and stamp their feet and tell us to stop writing bookish lists.
Well, guess what, grumpy people- these lists aren’t going anywhere.
First, let’s explore what bookish lists are NOT:
Satan
Armageddon
proof that all of humanity is dumber than dumb
proof that we like counting more than reading
the lazy way out of writing about books
Ok, now let’s talk about why bookish lists are GREAT:
They help you decide where to start with a genre, author, country, etc.– BR, as you know, publishes helpful lists on a regular basis, such as Swapna’s African Reading List, James’s list of the finalists for the Best Translated Book Award, and yours truly’s list of women who write awesome steampunk fiction, for example. Tor.com has published a list of “Favorite Science Fiction and Fantasy in Translation,” and The Millions recently listed a bunch of books with “colloquial titles.”
They help you get organized- where would we be without our personal TBR lists???
THEY’RE FUN, FERGODSSAKE.
So if you’re one of those list-haters, don’t write a long, boring essay about why bookish lists are long and boring. If you must express yourself, just put it in a list.
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