It gave rise to r/canonade. Lately I'm active at r/bookclub, when that is self-sustaining I'll got back to r/canonade, hopefully turn that over in time to interested successor mods and go back to my true interest, r/usages

This sub -- if someone wants to take over, make some good relevant posts for a couple weeks and I'll take you on as a mod. I think there's just not enough substance "out there" right now for lickerish to run as envisioned. But I'll keep it alive to the point of adding new small bookish subs as I notice them.

If you click on this ====>>> /r/canonade you'll see what I mean.

subscribers might be interested in this post in /r/books. Author shares my frustration about book conversations on reddit, though s/he's more interested in popular books, I think, the mechanical thwarts to sustained discussion are common.

/r/books/comments/456bdv/the_problem_with_rbooks/

Just a single post - from the (too big for this hub) /r/poetry sub to mention this time.

/u/mentalChatter posted this thread on Emily Dickinson's She Dealt her Pretty Words Like Blades that became exemplary of what lickerish is meant to promote. /u/lightpeeler and /u/IgorAce /u/gwrgwir all contributed.

I always include user names because reddit notifies the poster - hopefully they come here, like lickerish, and post "more like that", and others imitate them. I'm still not publicizing this sub to a wider audience.

I've also joined the mod team on /r/ReadingGroup and there are pointers there to every active group I know of.

One thing I found that is interesting to me is /r/asoiafreread. It's about the Game of Thrones/Song of Ice books. I'm not interested in the books - but check out the activity in the sub, the care that posts are put together. These are people who think their book is important - why nothing like this for Madame Bovary, Crying of Lot 49, Satanic Verses, Tom Jones. Surely those are better, more artful books with more to say about them than Martin's work?

I haven't posted another "Lickerish Pudding" because I haven't seen any conversation at all about books except in reading groups, and I've been involved in a lot of those convesations. While I think for now it makes sense to call attention to any conversation about literature, even those that you're a part of, I'm shy to do it myself. Will start.

Have continued to find other small subs that were started by enthusiasts. Most listed in sidebar - I always ask mods permission before adding someone, about 70% of people answer - so there are small, literature relevant subs I haven't mentioned.

17 subscribers, that's 17/19ths of a subscriber per day. I haven't advertised or mentioned the sub at all since posting into newsubreddits and getting no response, that was about 10 days ago. Before publicizing, I want to start posting at least myself in some of the lickerish subs, encourage anyone else to do so too - go over to Wordsworth or HenryJames and post a question.

The premise of this sub doesn't have immediate appeal to a wide audience. 13 days since inception, 13 subscribers. 30 subs included - that means probably I wrote to 50-70 mods (lots of subs have multiples, and a fair number didn't reply) and only 8 or 9 mods signed up. I "advertised" on /r/newreddits and there was no interest (1 downvote, no upvotes, I think - you don't see vote count but I got 0 points)

I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.

The way to popularize the idea involves the work of participating substantively, writing the kind of posts I'm complaining are not present on reddit. I'll continue to write "pudding" issues. But the real evangelization is to go around to the subs in the sidebar, comment on posts there or posting new threads that discuss passages from works.

When there are other participating subscribers here, it would be fun to make a game/ritual of it. Literary sub golf - see if you can write a substantive relative post that involves a theme or technique that will link to another.

About Lickerish Pudding is a link roundup of posts about literature around reddit. If you see content on reddit that belongs, please let us know; Here are submission guidelines

[A post that was here got removed by the author or mods]

Naked Lunch Analysis

The response by /u/AbbathOcculta in /r/Burroughs was made after conversations of the first stab at lickerish pudding.

How to write a modernist poem /u/MilsonBartleby has a list of the attributes of modernist poetry in AskLiteraryStudies. I'd like to see more about specfific poems, but two get mentioned, and that's two more than most posts about literature. Good opportunity for a tangent about Marianne Moore.

Previous edition

How/what to contribute to lickerish pudding

As in the sidebar -

https://www.reddit.com/user/lickerishpudding/m/lickerishpudding

Where you can see a full-back Moby-Dick themed tattoo rubbing shoulders with a discussion of Critique of Pure Reason.

Lickerish is intended to give rise to more reddit content about literature.

You might ask:

1. How do you intend to "give rise" to that content?

2. What do you include/exclude in "literature"? What is linked/not linked from "the Hub"?

3. Why promote specialized subs when /r/books, /r/poetry, and /r/literature exist?

And answers are below.

How do you intend to "give rise" to that content?

• lickerish pudding is a "best links I've seen about literature" thread published here periodically; that is the primary way. See the wiki about strategy and rationale for lickerish pudding. The idea is that over time, readers interested in the topics it covers will proactively seek out the periodic post. And they'll contribute similar content to threads, and it will have a snowball effect. Even readers who've never heard of lickerish pudding will imitate the posting style that lickerish pudding endorses, because its superior, and they'll see it rewarded withinteresting responses, as well as upvotes.
• Besides a venue for lickerish pudding, this sub itself is for conversation about how to use reddit more effectively for literature links. It's also a "water cooler" for mods of these subs, and a place to find other interesting subs, and discuss the potential for new subs.
• The user /u/lickerishPudding collects abandoned subs and gives them away to interested new moderators. See this

What do you include/exclude in "literature"? What is linked/not linked from "the Hub"?

What I mean by "literature" is: Writing recognized as canonical, or held forth as potentially canonical by a significant number of readers who recognize the canon as a worthwhile abstraction. And what is "canonical"? - the list at www.greaterbooks.com is close enough to what I mean that I'd say anyone who doesn't recognize commonality and merit of a large majority of the works there disagrees with the premise of this sub.

So what gets linked, why exclude X?

Topics highlighted in lickerish pudding might often be non-canonical works, or not about specific works at all. There's plenty to say about narrative, characterization and other core concerns in all kinds of work and many fields of study. David Foster Wallace's syllabuses, which feature writers like Thomas Harris and Jackie Collins, are illustrative of the scope of interest someone interested in literature could have (even if you argue DFW wouldn't define "literature" at all like I do). I wouldn't include Gene Wolfe but I would include Tolkien in the "hub" sidebar, even though I prefer reading about New Urth to reading about Middle Earth. The "Hub" might include to a sub of jokes about writers, or about cliches, which are certainly topics less "writerly" than Wolfe's work. But they are of greater interest to more people who are interested in "the canon." The sidebar list of subs is a significant part of the definition of lickerish. I wouldn't foresee including subs focusing on any original TV drama, graphic novel, anime, regardless of whether I enjoy the work. Similarly, not just any interesting or good academic sub goes here. A sub about German folklore might fit and one about urban folklore not, even if we wind up frequently linking to posts in an urban folklore sub.

Why promote specialized subs when /r/books, /r/poetry, and /r/literature exist?

I posted a thread here about that.

In my own sub, /r/usages, I noticed today that the headline quote for one of my specimens was a nice line of iambic pentameter

who knew what septic tooth would next find skin?

How about a subreddit that collects those? And see what kind of collage of found poems could be assembled....

Lickerish PUDding is a "magazine" of user-contributed links ("pointers") to reddit content that the contributor wants to see upvoted. Anyone can contribute, and the content can be in any sub, not just those listed in the sidebar.

When you read this links and consider giving your upvote - remember that in discussion threads an upvote doesn't indicate agreement with a post, it indicates that you think the post contributes to humanity in some positive if small way.

Contributions

• Linked content should be of about literature, literary movements, or language: don't link indiscriminately to good content: the content should somehow to be of "readerly" interest.

• The target of the link should be a self-post or a comment, not a link post. This sub is for bringing wider attention to content created by reddit users (including you and your sub).

• It is fine to link to posts of your own, posts in a thread you're involved with, or for Mods to link to posts on their own subreddit. In fact, if you've put some thought into a post it's exactly the appropriate use of the post to mention it here. It'll usually look more gracious if you point out your interest; your call, no rules.

• You are encouraged to editorialize: comment about what you like in the content you're pointing to. "Sell" it to us.

• If you see something mods or users are doing that encourages good posting, by all means point it out in /r/Lickerish.

• Pointing to old threads is just fine, even though reddit doesn't allow upvotes on

posts over a certain age. You might mention in the comment it's too late for an upvote.

About the subject line: Today is July 15th, Iris Murdoch's birthday; 10 days from now, July 24th is Singer's deathday.

This describes what I see as impediments to conversation in Reddit's UI. By "UI" I don't mean colors/fonts/layout but the software's selection of what to make prominent.

In comments we can talk about how to address those problems, or whether they are problems. As users, the behavior of the software is a given: if there is a problem, we can only address it behaviorally, or culturally.

The problems

Link / Comment ontological disparity

The UI has no mechanism for promoting highly voted comments. If someone posts a link to a fatuous article, and you write a great response, the amount of readers you reach is mostly a side-effect of how many people are induced to read comments about the link. If the bad link gets a lot of votes, more people might see it and click on the "comments" box. And the basic point of reddit is to get people to click on links, not read comments.

Planned obsolescence

Reddit's presentation prizes newness. If there's a post I've been thinking about for four days, and I reply - it's likely not going to be seen by anyone except the person to whom I reply. Certainly that's true on a busy sub for a 2-month old post. Old threads with new contributions don't become prominent.

Lack of overview

When I go to a sub's page, I see recent or hot posts (usually those are the same for smaller subs) and how much activity. There's no at-a-glance activity of who's contributing. So say I know I like posts by certain users, I can't tell to which threads those users have contributed without opening them up one-by-one. I know about the "friends" feature, and I use it; I don't know if many redditors do, though.

When a comment reply gets a lot of upvotes, you can't see that til you open the thread - the UI mostly is designed to prize interesting links - which I think gets it off on the wrong foot as a platform for encouraging conversation.

For talking about what this sub is about & what to do with it & how to further its goals.

Example: reading "In Memoriam" and would like to jot down occasional notes, welcoming but not depending on input from others. Spoilers are to be expected.

Q. How's it different /r/books and /r/literature, they have "what are you reading" threads.

Q. /r/literature allows for posting analysis, starting conversations of works. Why not use those

A while ago I proposed a sub for the purpose of writing synopses of this-and-that in the style of Don Juan (ottava rima).

Last weekend I actually began writing one and got a stanza I thought good enough to share with the world.... and it's just the kind of obscure-to-the-point-of-frivolity thing that LKRSH would serve to cultivate - hardly anyone would be interested, and anyone who would be interested would be unlikely to go looking to see if such a sub existed.