Laura Miller, Salon’s book critic, has penned an interesting article about the craft of recommending books.

To add some heft to the piece, she brings in the uberfrau of book suggestions, famed Seattle librarian and Book Lust scribe Nancy Pearl, whose go-to books are To Kill a Mockingbird, Lonesome Dove and Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.

It kills me (in a good way) that Pearl is still recommending Mockingbird. I mean, is there anybody over 17 that didn’t have to read it for school? How awesome would it be to read that novel for the first time without the filter of a well-meaning teacher?

The article reminded me of my more waggish days as a bookseller, where I wanted to make “if you like X, you’ll like Y” shelf-talkers with the most absurdly tenuous connections. Ones like “If you liked Fatherhood by Bill Cosby, you’ll like Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver” and “If you liked Sherman Alexie, you’ll like Arundhati Roy” (they’re both Indians, right?).

Sorry if that last joke went a little to far, I was trying to make fun of some of the absurdity that goes into book suggestions, not Native Americans or Booker Prize-winning authors.