In one corner, we have Goodreads.com, "a free website that allows you to see what your friends are reading" by creating a social networking environment where you can take a look at other users' virtual bookshelves and read what they have to say about those books. You can assign category tags to books that will help you find similar titles in other people's collections, you can use widgets to display the books you're reading on your personal website, and you can take part in discussion groups with just about any literary (or non-literary) focus imaginable.

In the other corner, we have the NBCC's Good Reads, a list of fifteen books recommended by "smart readers" you've probably never met, except maybe at a book signing, and with whom it's unlikely you'll ever interact so you can learn more about what makes their list so special, beyond the fact that the books on it have been reviewed all over the place. (Unlikely, that is, but not impossible: To their credit, the National Book Critics Circle is sponsoring panel discussions in 15 bookstores nationwide beginning tonight in Miami and Los Angeles.)

And that, in a nutshell, is the battle between the new, participatory media which provides top-to-bottom opportunities for consumer engagement, and the old school media which relies upon experts and arbiters to explain what's what. If you were ever truly fascinated by what a cluster of people "from Annie Proulx to Jonathan Franzen" were reading, well, now you know. Feel particularly moved to buy any of those books now?

And the worst thing is you should, since the books are all perfectly good books, some of them even great books. But a list created by committee that doesn't even offer a capsule description of its contents, or even a one-line blurb, just isn't the same as a genuinely passionate recommendation from someone whose judgment you trust. At least the bookstore events are a step in the right direction—a tacit recognition of the social nature of reading and, perhaps, of the future direction of a genuinely vital literary culture.

(In fairness, the lists do share space on the website with a string of posts bearing actual short recommendations from the likes of Stephen Pinker and Christina Eng. So that's progress, too.)