There has been an utter rash of posts at the whatsthatbook sub.

[conuly]

Many of which violate both the rules and plain common sense by having titles like "What's that book" or "Looking for book".

I am continually baffled by how people who are looking for books can have such appallingly bad literacy skills. I'm not even talking about "they can't spell and none of them have heard of punctuation", which would be bad enough, or the perennial "I read it as a kid" which would be useful if we knew how old you were, buddy. I'm talking about the ones who at least know what spellcheck is but still thought the thing to do was to start their post with five paragraphs about their grandfather, or who think "protagonist name, end of book, setting, antagonist name, genre, opening sentence, color of cover, oh I think she had a boyfriend too" is a rational sequence that is easy to follow.

Obviously these people *can* read, so... I don't get it.

I don't usually tell these people that their posts are confusing, though, because god knows I don't know a way to do it nicely.

Anyway, if you have some time to kill, and a reddit account, you can always give yourself imaginary internet points for the solves. That's what I do! I'm up to seventy bajillion and three. The trick is to know what books have been asked for before, because odds are they're being asked for again.

Comments

[mount_oregano]

Most people can't write their way out of a paper bag.

I think this is a good thing because my writing skills and those of my husband keep a roof over our heads. If everyone could write well, we wouldn't get paid.

Why can't people write well? I think there are a lot of reasons, and one is that they were never taught to write well. Writing is hard work, and hard to learn, and teachers simply do not have the opportunity in the curriculum to take on a project that requires high student motivation, which is often lacking, and high individual involvement, which is hard to provide to a class of thirty students or more.

Most writers are self-selected and self-taught.

[conuly]

I'm not asking these people to write essays. (I really am not. The ones who write essays start off telling us in great detail how this book helped them cope with their childhood traumas, and there's no nice way to say this but NOBODY CARES. This isn't therapy, it's "find a book" time. Get to the point!) All I'm asking for is a single coherent paragraph.

[mount_oregano]

I'm sorry to say that I think you're asking for too much. I have concluded this from long, demoralizing experience.

Generally coherence expression would make the world a better place, however, in countless ways.

[fred_mouse]

Or willingness to write it in dot points so I don't have to parse sentences. That would make my bit of world a better place at least!

[conuly]

I would be thrilled to see that, but I honestly don't trust these people to paragraph properly.

[pauamma]

I have stopped being surprised at how many people can write but can't read or can read but not write.

[okojosan]

I started reading whatsthatbook because of you. It's fun!

[calimac]

Depressing feeling after reading the one-line descriptors on reddit that I probably have never heard of any of the books being looked for.

[conuly]

If it's not middle grade or YA, it often seems to be romance. I myself am not a big romance reader, so....

[thewayne]

There was a great post on the Libraries Reddit recently: guy went to a library in Anchorage a while back, read a short story in a book, had no clue who the author was or what the book was, but really liked it. He emailed the library, described it, and an hour or so later received an emailed PDF containing a scan of the story and the cover of the book.

Kind of like yesterday I received an ILL request and I didn't bother conducting a catalog search for the request, just walked to the shelf and pulled it. I'd sent it out before. HBO/Tom Hanks/Spielburg series The Pacific. Of course it's really easy if it's a DVD.