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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This is hilarious, and it's interesting that it is.
Though why there are no "fandoms"/communities about textbooks is very different from why there are no fandoms about e.g. pop-sci books .
While I'd totally be part of a Sipser fandom, I'm not sure what one would do in it...
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re. Sipser, I was imagining a bunch of people trying to work their way through the book, posting about questions with the exercises, etc.
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Well r/slatestarcodex has 41.9K members - r/cgpgrey has 130K members. But the basic point is you need something to generate discussion which means iterative but accessible creation / discussion e.g memes and links
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