degree of responsibility

Over lunch, Carl and I were talking about a feature article in one of today's papers. It asked a number of people, including our friend Arnold Arre, for recommendations on books to read this summer. Arnold, of course, answered with excellent choices including C.S. Lewis' beautfiful written Narnia series (I disagreed only with Goodbye, Chunky Rice for reasons I've written about earlier). However, the rest of the respondents answered with selections that weren't entirely of value - to me, of course (another observation was the paucity of Filipino works apart from Marge Evasco and Luis Katigbak).

Naturally, everyone's taste is valid, opinions are personal, blah blah. Granted. That's not the point.

What I asked Carl was this: Knowing that your list (asked in the context of you being important or influential) could potentially influence just one person to pick up your recommended book and read, would feel responsibility toward that person? Would you alter your list of books that you read for sheer brainless fun with picks from literature (which you must have read and enjoyed yourself, of course). Or would you reason "Hell, no, I'm not responsible at all."?

To what degree would you be honest and to what degree would feel a certain sense of responsibility? Does it matter? It does to me.

After much talk (yes, when you talk with me it takes a while for the earth to settle), we agreed that a qualified list would be best. At least the reader would know that you chose to recommend some piece of crap because "funny, eh". No one is misled.

By the way, both of Carl's Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah books are on the reco list.