Who might ever have anticipated the bounty of the internet?! I'm sure people did. Someone clearly looked at the collegiate inter-library-loan system and thought, "One day, this is how people will read newspapers, watch porn, and learn how to make their own cheese." Among the many gifts of modern interconnectivity is the triumph of the list. People have been making them since at least the first ancestor put up a grocery list on the cave-walls at Lascaux. (As a species we will ascribe deeper meanings to perfectly common things. I look at a The Great Hall of Bulls and I see a note on the refrigerator, "Don't forget the venison.") So lists like the poor are always with us, but it took the internet to really make the simple list into something called, "content."
I should like to tell you that I disdain this sort of thing as contemptible and I suppose I do, but I also read those maddening 100 Best Books surveys*, and watch the 10 Worst Wedding Disaster videos, and I still make lists, in my head and on scrap-paper all the damned time. And at Christmas? What is a child's Letter to Santa Claus usually but a list? What is Santa's greatest weapon if not his list? I love Christmas, and I must admit, I like a good list. More even than reading one, I enjoy making a good list. Five best film Scrooges in order? Alastair Sim, George C. Scott (yeah, I know it was TV, don't be such a snob. If the 5 Scrooges was a girl group, he'd be Scary Scrooge.) Patrick Stewart, Michael Caine, Albert Finney. Really liked Christopher Plummer too of course, though in that movie Scrooge is more of a supporting player. Now unlike other people's lists, mine are based on years of careful statistical analysis, rigorous peer-review, and complete objectivity. See? How can one trust anything on the internet? For all you know that might be true. It isn't, of course, but who's to stop me saying so? So yeah, internet lists are stupid. How stupid, or rather, stupid how? Well, for one they tend to an arbitrary number, either to make things look evenly balanced or because we're used to a particular countdown to the top or because rational people don't count by fours or fourteens. Secondly, at least one item on, or conspicuously absent from every internet list is meant to provoke. No other reason in the world for me not to include Bill Murray's Scrooge on my list -- save that I don't much like Bill Murray and I know everyone else does. Finally the unacknowledged truth to ruin every such list is the fact that taste is subjective and opinions prove nothing. A very wise friend has taught me to never argue taste, which is both good advice and a rather elegant way of calling other people's taste into question, no? So, you love Bill Murray's Scrooged? Good to know. You go right ahead. I never argue taste. (Oh, snap.)
I think my least favorite internet lists are those that purport to justify a sneaking suspicion, like 5 Signs He's Kissing Someone Else Under the Mistletoe, or 10 Things You Don't Know About Santa Claus, or The 10 Secrets You Need to Know to Roast a Perfect Turkey. Seems we should worry, we know nothing, and we've been doing nearly everything wrong. I know these look like straw-men, but you know as well as I do that you've seen all three of these and more than once. That's another thing about these internet lists, they never really go away, do they? I know better than to be baited and yet I don't and I am. Take the three I've just mentioned. Is there anything more tiresome than this old hook or any of a dozen seasonal variations on the classic "Is He Cheating?" scare. Evidently it is still 1963 and we are all of us married bourgeois heterosexuals and someone has been staying late at the office. (Yeah, but is he cheating, you ask? I'll ask him when he's finished, honey. He's a little busy right now and nobody likes a man who talks with his mouth full.) Next, are you really going to quiz a jolly ol' elf like me about Santa facts? That seems a wasted effort for everyone. You don't know what I know, but bitch look at me. (I only now realized there's no picture of me attached to this. For any who don't know me then, I look like Santa Claus if Santa was slightly nelly person who wears clogs because boots are hard to kick off.) As for those kitchen-shaming headlines that always suck me right in, okay, we did try the cooking the turkey breast-side down thing and it did keep the white meat moist, but I missed all that crispy skin. Trivial, you say? You bet. Harmless? Probably not altogether. So what's the point? Engagement! Interaction! Top 10 Ways to Stop Scrolling. Clicks! Audience engagement used to mean getting the nippers to clap to bring Tinkerbell out of her suicidal depression. Now I suspect there really is science involved, even if it's just, you know, the social sciences, the red-headed step-children of real (read hard) science. 5 Ways Focus Groups Lie! 10 Algorithms You Need to Fear! 7 Signs Santa Might Be Gay!
Booksellers are notorious list-makers. It's a tool of the trade, friend. Most people come into an independent bookstore looking for that book they want -- even if they can't remember what it's called, or who wrote it, where they heard about it, or why they wanted it. Keeps us busy, most days. Then there are the beloved browsers who need us not at all, who are content to wander until they find enlightenment or release. We appreciate them too as they basically ask nothing of us but directions to the restrooms, and if they are really our sort of shoppers, maybe a basket. We love people who require a basket. Perhaps our favorite customers (we miss you most of all, Scarecrow,) are the people who want suggestions, either for themselves or for gifts. Honestly, we want to talk about books. We really do. You make us feel truly seen. We have thoughts. We want to tell you what to read. So what do we do? We make lists. Five Books You'll Love Because They Aren't Bridgerton! Three Books Grandma Won't Think Smutty! Ten Mysteries Better Than That One You Read in the B&B! Seven Horror Novelists Who Aren't Stephen King! Four Books We're Embarrassed You Haven't Read Yet! Twelve Books You Didn't Really Ask For! Seriously, Read Better Books! WHY Am I Shouting?! Keep Your Voice Down, It's a Bookstore!
Enthusiasm can get the better of us. Usually this happens because it's been awhile since a customer asked for a recommendation and we are kind of pent up. (Why are you people not asking me about Little Dorrit?! I really need to talk about Little Dorrit. If I'm being honest, I started a book club just so I could one day talk about Little fucking Dorrit.) It's not all delightful chat, working in a bookstore. Let me not to the meeting of true minds admit impediments, but people will ask us for recommendations they have no reason or right to assume we will be able to make. I really don't know what "the best book" is on thermodynamics, honey, or what "a good one" might be about genocides. (Yes, actual questions.) Do I really look like someone with an advanced STEM degree? I'm wearing an apron, sweetie. And a word of advice, never ask anyone who has brought it up what might constitute "a good one"on genocide because that person will tell you and it will not be good. Cooking with a wok, raising chickens, World War Two, what to buy for your cousin who used to be in an actual gang, and yes, I can probably come up with something. Walk with me. We'll check the shelves. You might be surprised. I might be surprised. But we all have our limitations, it's true. That's why hopefully there will be more than one of us to ask. Me? What do I think would be a good book for an exceptionally bright nine year old who doesn't like sports? Cities of the Plain, maybe? Does Joey like gladiator movies? Has he read Foucault? Work with me here, Aunt Margaret, I am trying.
The holidays are the best time for bookstore lists. It's open season for recommendations. We are limbered up and ready to go, go, go. Let's see where the season takes us! Last year? Last year it was trees. Everything was about trees. Makes no goddamned sense, but hey, you want trees, boy howdy we got trees: mother trees, other trees, the souls of trees, anthologies of forest stories, poems not by Joyce Kilmer about trees, books about Japanese forest-bathing, The Man Who Planted Trees if you're looking for a classic. I can and will make you a list for the tree-hugger in your life, and lucky you! (Hey, at least it's not your cousin who likes guns.) We actually keep lists at the Information Desk. Come the holidays every year we have employee meetings in the General Books Department and everybody brings at least three books to recommend for the holiday shoppers and then we compile a list.
We also reprint lists from literary websites like Book Riot and Lit Hub. We keep the Christmas issues of the book reviews. By the day after Thanksgiving we are swimming in lists. We kinda know what we're doing by now. If you liked X, you should try Y. The lists are specially helpful when it comes to books I will never read like all the things that actually sell the best: children's books, Young Adult novels, SFF, hiking guides, local history, birds. As I may have mentioned, none of us reads everything. I look at the gardening section, or needlecraft, or home improvement, and I see chores. I look at sports and think, "balls." Clearly I need my coworkers. I need a little help. I need those lists.
Obviously I'm going to defend the lists I use at work as being different in kind from the clickbait, but at least half of the lists I make for myself are just exercises in self-soothing. (Three New Cringeworthy Compound Words? Self-soothing. Eco-anxiety. Cringeworthy. ) What are my favorite children's books? Well, that possessive apostrophe should tell you that they are all old, but yes, I have a list. What are the worst trends in book design this year? Oh! Another hyphenate I hate, color-blocking! I'll say no more, but yes, I've made a list. Irish writers who should never be degraded in a St. Patty's Day display? List. Contemporary cartoonist I want to like but can't because they cannot draw? List. Great books I know you won't be able to read because the dog dies? List. Writers who should never have gone to Iowa? List. Books that tell me we cannot be friends? List. Books I want to recommend to bright teenagers just to be spiteful but don't? List. Novelists I wish were Muriel Spark, or at least had read Muriel Spark before writing a novel? List. Poets who should never read in public again? Long list. Academic associations who should be producing style guides for writers? No list.
Making lists is sometimes a way not to lose my job, or my shit.
And sometimes it's just fun. So to close, just a quick, completely subjective and thus completely pointless list without further explanation:
Brad's Ten Totally Not Controversial Facts About Christmas
1) In 1989 Mariah Carey cowrote and recorded the only Christmas single in my adult lifetime to quite rightly become a seasonal standard, and I don't even like Mariah Carey
2) Christmas wrapping paper is supposed to be gaudy, that's the trick of it. It goers under a Christmas tree, people, not on the gift-table at a first wedding in Newport.
3) Nobody cares if you do or do not like fruitcake. This does not make you interesting in either case.
4) Gift-cards can be a thoughtful present. Remember, people you love can have terrible taste.
5) The only people who think it would be fun to sing-along to Handel's Messiah should not be singing Handel's Messiah or they would already be singing Handel's Messiah down front.
6) Not everybody can afford an eight foot Scotch pine or the lights to cover one, you elitist jerk.
7) You are allowed to still love Rankin/Bass without irony and without being problematic
8) We now say "Happy Holidays" because we live in a diverse, secular society, not because we hate Christmas or Christians. Honestly, some of us still like Christmas.
9) David Sedaris' book, Holidays On Ice, which includes Santaland Diaries and Dinah, The Christmas Whore, is the only Christmas book by a contemporary American writer that anyone will remember when we are all dead and buried.
See? Did we really need ten? No. You may be right. I never argue taste.
*Deciding the best books by a popular pole of readers is like baking with toddlers. Someone is invariably dropping something indigestibly grubby into the mix. Spoils the whole batch.
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