4 ms·

If you don’t need TikTok to find good books, how would you recommend finding good books? Even if you’re at a library that doesn’t narrow things down all that m

If you don’t need TikTok to find good books, how would you recommend finding good books? Even if you’re at a library that doesn’t narrow things down all that much, I’ve been to libraries with several floors filled with bookshelves.

janalsncm 2y ago
Long before TikTok and YouTube and even Google there was the Dewey Decimal System. We use it to categorize books into a hierarchical tree structure. So I think what most people do is to find a category they’re interested in and look inside that category for either subcategories or books they find interesting.
- duskwuff 2y ago
  The Dewey Decimal Classification is terrible. It's an incredibly dated system with serious flaws like an pervasive European/Christian bias - for instance, notice that class 200 ("Religion") is almost entirely devoted to Christian topics, with a single subclass 290 for all "other religions" - and a lack of effective classifications for modern technical topics. It's also basically useless at classifying works of fiction, to the extent that most libraries don't even bother using it for that purpose. Standard practice is to group all fiction into a few broad categories (like "mystery" or "fantasy", as well as a catch-all for general fiction) and shelve them alphabetically by author. Needless to say, this isn't conducive to browsing.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    i was going to say that a detailed classification of fiction would not really help finding interesting stuff. apart from the broad categories as you mention, interesting books are more defined by writing style, characters, etc. i am struggling with this as i keep looking for new books to read. being in a book club helps a lot.
devbent 2y ago
My local library has an "ask the librarian" program. Tell them what you like to read and they'll email you a list of 10 books to try next.

janalsncm 2y ago

Long before TikTok and YouTube and even Google there was the Dewey Decimal System. We use it to categorize books into a hierarchical tree structure. So I think what most people do is to find a category they’re interested in and look inside that category for either subcategories or books they find interesting.

duskwuff 2y ago
The Dewey Decimal Classification is terrible. It's an incredibly dated system with serious flaws like an pervasive European/Christian bias - for instance, notice that class 200 ("Religion") is almost entirely devoted to Christian topics, with a single subclass 290 for all "other religions" - and a lack of effective classifications for modern technical topics. It's also basically useless at classifying works of fiction, to the extent that most libraries don't even bother using it for that purpose. Standard practice is to group all fiction into a few broad categories (like "mystery" or "fantasy", as well as a catch-all for general fiction) and shelve them alphabetically by author. Needless to say, this isn't conducive to browsing.
- em-bee 2y ago
  i was going to say that a detailed classification of fiction would not really help finding interesting stuff. apart from the broad categories as you mention, interesting books are more defined by writing style, characters, etc. i am struggling with this as i keep looking for new books to read. being in a book club helps a lot.

devbent 2y ago

My local library has an "ask the librarian" program. Tell them what you like to read and they'll email you a list of 10 books to try next.