English teacher (and Star Chamber Correspondent) Alan Kennedy writes to tell us about a new book recommendation site his brother-in-law is building called Flashlight Worthy. With lots of hand-picked book lists and reviews, it’s a sort of annex and way station to Amazon.
For our purposes here, one of the fun things about it is Alan’s list called The Best Graphic Novels. I didn’t know Alan was a fan of graphic novels, but I see he’s picked some of my all-time favorites too. American Born Chinese was a recent lucky find for me, and was part of my omnivorous search for a better understanding of the crashing surf between Chinese and American cultures.
I was thinking of adding a list on books about numbers: pi, e, i, phi, zero, infinity, and one. But I’ve only read two of those so far, and at any rate, Flashlight Worth is still in beta, so it doesn’t support automated book list creation yet. But it looks like a fun place. Check it out.
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber 
Ned, Peter here — Alan’s brother-in-law and the creator of Flashlight Worthy. Thanks so much for the shout-out.
I too was surprised at Alan’s deep interest in Graphic Novels. Having read comics for the last 30 years, you think it would have come up before I spied Art Spiegelman on his nightstand.
As far as a list about numbers — or any other list for that matter — bring it on. Email me the material (through the site) and I’ll have it live in mere minutes. This goes for your readers as well. We’re looking for any and all thoughtful, themed lists.
As to the lack of tools to allow you to create a list directly, well, I don’t know there ever will be. While I’m a big proponent of the open world of the web, sometimes it can be too much of a good thing…
If you take a look at the sites out there that allow anyone to create a list you’ll find endless duplication within the site, poor editorial quality, and questionable topic choice. (Case in point, GoodReads launched just such a feature a few weeks ago. Within 24 hours there were 8 different “Best Vampire Books Ever” lists.)
In general, I applaud democracy and giving power to the people (as illustrated by my 3 years as the head of Product Development for Meetup.com). In this case though I think ruling with an iron fist might yield better results. ;)
-Peter
P.S. Oh, and great blog. I dropped by the first time for Alan’s first guest spot and have been following ever since.
Hi Peter:
Thanks for stopping by, and good luck with Flashlight Worthy.