It always seems so limiting to put anything in a category. Some WordPress bloggers are good at categorizing their posts, and I’m sure that helps many readers, but my posts are never about one thing only.
Netflix makes movie recommendations based on categories that pigeonhole movies we’ve rated highly. But the approach seems clunky. Just because we have liked a lot of foreign films (Wadjda, Son of Rambow, Princess Mononoke), that doesn’t mean we like all foreign films. Maybe we like the ones we’ve seen for some other reason than being foreign. Maybe they are less glitzy, more honest, or more entertaining.
He are some funny categories Netflix recommended for my husband and me: “emotional, independent films based on books,” “critically acclaimed foreign movies,” “mind bending movies,” “anime,” “musicals,” “social & cultural documentaries,” “critically acclaimed emotional movies,” and “horror movies.” Horror!? Where did they get that?
At the late, lamented Kate’s Mystery Books in Cambridge, you could get pretty sound advice on books from Kate herself. She would ask you to name some mysteries you liked, and you might say you had read all of Tony Hillerman and Arthur Upfield. Then she would say, “Different cultures.”
Well, ye-es. But what kept me coming back to those authors were detectives who were likable and endings that were positive in some way. no matter how small. Kate did give me some authors I loved, like Eliot Pattison (mysteries about Tibet and, more recently, several about 18th century American Indians), but other books about different cultures might be too noir for me or too fluffhead, like mysteries with animal detectives.
I suppose categories help a bit. I just think they are clunky. Where would I file this post, now? Movies? Books? Retail? Misconceptions? Colin Cotterill, Dr. Siri, Laos?
Colin Cotterill writes a series that is both funny and deadly serious about a 70+ coroner in Laos, Dr. Siri, a likable antihero with an offbeat bunch of equally likable cronies.
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