There are tons of active subreddits about specific fiction books, but surprisingly few large subreddits about specific non-fiction books.
I wonder if this is bc you might discuss problems in e.g. Feynman Lectures in /r/physics, but fiction lacks cross-book “home."
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Of course there are Harry Potter subreddits, but there’s also, like… /r/houseofleaves (8k members!), /r/southernreach (4k members), etc.
And yet: no subreddit for MolBioCell! Or Sipser! Or CLRS! Or any Polya! /r/sicp has only 472 members?!
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/r/mikeandike (nickname for and Isaac Chuang’s text on QC/QI) has 2.6k members but two of the most recent posts are from (two different!) fans of the *candy* hoping this was a subreddit devoted to it!
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I'm intrigued! I've jokingly tried to create these points around Seeing Like A State here on Twitter (searching for it here yields interesting stuff; ~1-3 tweets a day out there)
To generalize more, I ask: what would the best online Schelling Point for a non-fiction book be?
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Riffing: if I wanted to deepen my understanding of a book, I might like to hold a seminar (perhaps Foo-style) in which attendees facilitate a variety of sessions inspired by the book’s claims / ideas.
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What do you mean?
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I think the real comparator is subreddits devoted to authors. Fictionbooks tend to over take their authors because of entrancement with the world, whereas when people are passionate about a nonfiction book, its either in relation to overall subject or the author themself
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Like there wouldn't be a sub for 'the tipping point' thered be a sub for gladwell fans, while there'd be separate subs for a scifi world and a high fantasy world even if created by the same author
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I think this is perhaps because most non-fiction books don't do any world building. Generative world building is mostly the realm of fiction (but would be fun to think of non-fiction ideas here!)
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