The Gift of Recommendations and Exchanges

Whether books, movies, or sometimes music—many of the greatest joys I have in any relationship emerge from the giving and receiving of recommendations.

When I was compiling my top movie and book lists over the last two weeks, I was struck by how many of my top picks were rooted in a personal relationship. From the books, A Scanner Darkly was a recommendation from my friend Tommy, and my friend Chris picked What Are Children For to read together. The Communist Manifesto and It’s a Bird were both read in order to participate in a conversation with friends. From the movies, all but two were from direct recommendations—five again from Tommy, one from my friend Andrew, and two more from different movie watching groups. (We’ll come back to each of these momentarily.) These books and movies make up some of the most pleasant, rewarding, and often formative experiences of my year, and they are each directly linked to a friendship.

Another amazing thing about recommendations is that in addition to the payoff—actually enjoying a song, or having a friend tell you they liked the novel you recommended—the words themselves are a joy. It is a pleasure in itself to contemplate a friend in order to point them toward something lovely or to have someone scrutinize you as they ponder what art you might enjoy. For that reason, I take recommendations very seriously (and so should you). Too often I’ve heard, “Oh, you’d like…” and what follows clearly would not appeal to that person. What they meant to say, whether true or false, was, “Oh, I really like… and any sane person also would.” Which is not a ridiculous statement to make. And while there is a place for those sorts of ultimate claims, the art of the recommendation requires reflection on a friendship, on the other’s taste, their history, and their values.

With that in mind, allow me to rehearse some of the ways in which I have enjoyed recommending and being recommended to. The most common version is a casual, “Hey, you should check out…” often delivered from the opposite side of a table with a couple coffees on it. Many of these I have catalogued on my computer in two needlessly long documents, one listing movies I intend (hope) to watch and the other listing books I intend (hope) to read. (The documents are titled “cinema” and “literature,” respectively—pretentious, I know.) Each movie and book in these documents is a recommendation of some sort, the vast majority coming from lists of popular or critically acclaimed works. But making up a non-negligible portion of these documents are the recommendations of friends and teachers and mentors. Next to The Goldfinch, it says “Stephen” in parentheses; next to A Bronx Tale, it says “Wemimo;” next to The Light of Christ, “Zsanna”—and so on.

On the flip side, I may enjoy even more the task of constructing a recommendation—or, more typically, a set of recommendations. Combining my love for movies and spreadsheets, I have several times compiled a list of around 20 recommended films for friends. I talk with them, learn more about their taste, and then deliberate on the movies I think they’ll most enjoy. In the most recent iteration for my friend Katherine, I decided on 10 movies specific to her taste and 10 she ought to see whether she likes it or not—and along with the titles, I included their Rotten Tomatoes score, my personal rating, how much I thought she’d like them, and a brief teaser description for each entry. Has anyone ever finished going through the list I gave them? The answer seems to be No—but if you’d like one for yourself, I’m always happy to try again.

Another mode of gathering recommendations is the book or movie club. During my time in Waco, I was in two such clubs. One of the groups, started by my friend Chris, of What Are Children For-fame, leaned primarily into religious movies—though there was a month that we watched I Love You, Man. That group was particularly nice for its focus on spiritual themes, even if some were less enthused with the group when they found out they had to watch the movie on their own time. The other Waco group, I am still a part of, and it’s composed of friends from undergrad who meet once in a blue moon over Zoom. (This group actually started as a book club, but we barely made it through two before the group decided, Books are hard. We still refer to ourselves as a book club, though it’s been cinema for a few years now.) The movies chosen for that group have something of a grab bag feel but occasionally result in the best movie I watch all year (see: A Serious Man, winner for last year). My favorite aspect of these clubs is the variety—the variety of choices from the different members and the thoughtful discussions from a variety of perspectives.

But even variety cannot compare with intimacy. My favorite sources of recommendation have been the handful of media exchanges that have sprouted up in the last few years of my life. Much like the first approach of casual recommendations over coffee, the media exchange differs only in the deliberateness and consistency. With one friend in particular, our media exchanges have become something of a ritual. We choose a medium. (He likes music but knows I’ve never gone beyond the title track of an album—so normally books or movies.) We both sit there in silence, scanning our Letterboxd and Goodreads, as we decide on a few works to suggest to the other. Then we talk through them—No, I’ve already seen that one… Eh, I want to read this before I read that—and settle on a few for each other. And while I would normally be content to give my suggestions and then focus on what was suggested to me, my unraveling memory has also forced on me the unexpected benefit of revisiting beloved films and essays and such. So, a couple months later, we meet, having watched or read everything the other recommended and maybe reviewed some of our own recommendations, and we talk. For hours we talk. We talk about what we liked, what we didn’t like, what we thought was brilliant, why it worked or didn’t, what it means, what the implications are. It’s fodder for the actual greatest joy of any relationship: conversation. Of course, it can be frustrating when the other person doesn’t like what you gave them (they’re obviously wrong and don’t get it). But that’s all right. You get over it, and you just keep talking. And besides, you’re now a little more cultured, your mind a little more well-traveled, and if your friend knows you well—and at least one of their recommendations hits—then you’ve enjoyed the pleasure of one more thing of beauty.