What I Read

Tom Roper sends me a note in which he questions the usefulness of the Typelists on TypePad's blogs.  He says, "Why on earth should anyone else in the world care what I listen to or read?"  He quotes from TypePad: "one of the best ways to present your identity is by presenting supplemental information that's important to you, such as the media you consume."  He's troubled by the narcissism inherent in blogging, and I agree with that.  But I think there's another way to look at the lists -- there are indeed people whose reading habits matter to me.  I recall  Mark Frisse saying that one of the ways that he kept up with the issues that were important in his professional world was by tracking what the people that he respected were reading.  In the never-ending struggle to wade through the morass of information that bombards us, I'll take any guide that I can get.  If Mark Funk tells me that there's a new Skeletons CD available, I'm going to get it.  If Mike Flannery tells me that he's found a new book on the political development of the media that he thinks is worthwhile, I'm going to look into it.   If I find that Tom Roper is listing a new album by Robert Wyatt (who I've never heard of) or a book by William J. Mitchell (likewise), I'm going to consider it worth looking into.  The value of the lists comes not from what they might tell anybody about me  but that they might serve as a useful signpost to someone else.