was chatting with yvonne and wondering, why don't people pay us to choose and buy books for them? but there is such a job already, i immediately realised. being paid to read, assess, recommend and buy books for people is called librarianship in collections development. (yvonne: no! that's communitarian! be exclusive!) oughtn't there be a role though for a personal shopper in books? it would be a form of consultancy, i suppose, but not exactly in the sententious style of harold bloomian books to read before one dies, etc, but a personalised recommendation service? (which makes me think of the fiction advisory service that the nlb has - i wanted to work for them last year, but while it's a good idea in theory, i suspect what happens is that people write in and say, what should i read now that i've read dan brown? are there more books like that? and then you will have to take a cudgel to their skulls, and then it would be the end of that.)

i suppose also that feedback services like amazon's have become built-in recommendation services (even if the recommendations are not always good fits, amazon has the critical mass of contributions which one person can't possibly provide.) goodreads.com restores a bit of the personal factor, since it's your own friends you're receiving input from, but you're to take your cues from their ratings, and anyway i feel the site hasn't really taken off in a big way for it to be effective.

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me: so if i set up as an freelance book consultant, who'd hire me?

yvonne: upwardly mobile parents, retirees, the nouveaux riches who read dan brown and want to be seen with books that show they have discerning tastes.

me: eh but i cannot work for anyone who reads dan brown! even if he pays me lots... actually if he paid me enough i might - gotta have money to buy books for ME.

and then we go back to our favourite topic of setting up a rental bookshop (which is a very sensible concept i wonder why it hasn't caught on in other countries) but we'll only stock intellectually stimulating books that we ourselves wanted to read. ah, such dreams, she sighs.

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