New Category

Having just read The Wall by Peter Sis, I realize now that I need a new category for books on the site. Here’s what I currently have:

Highly Recommended Books – These are the books that I eagerly thrust into the hands of students, confident that that they will be well received. They’re funny or exciting or adventurous or take students to a place far away from everyday life.

Recommended Books – Pretty must the same as above, except my confidence in how well students will receive them isn’t quite as high.

Not Recommended – These are books that I don’t believe will be quickly accepted by students. They’re not bad books – many times it’s just the opposite – but something about them makes me hesitate to recommend them.

So now I need a new category. A category that says, “According to the conditions set forth by this website, I cannot in good conscience recommend this book, however, there are certain extenuating circumstances that negate the website’s qualifications and nevertheless earn this book a high recommendation, regardless of what is contained therein.”

Or, in other words, “This book doesn’t match my rules, but I like it anyway.”

Neither?

Maybe I should just say, “It’s my website and I make the rules so I can recommend what I want to recommend!” (Nanner, nanner, nanner!)

Okay, I agree. That doesn’t work either. But that still leaves me in need of a new category, a new label with which to classify the unclassifiable. Recommended Anyway? Unclassifiables? Recommended But…? Exceptions? Exemptions?

I have to do some thinking about this. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, send me an email (address to the right) or leave me a comment below.

Update: 1/16/09 - Six months later I changed the whole works: the recommendations, the recommended exceptions, all of it. Good thing I'm so decisive.