People talk a lot about the wisdom of crowds, but the truth is that large packs of people are better at judging some things than others.

Almost 16,000 NPR cast some 136,000 votes in NPR's Best Beach Books Ever poll. Whether such a vote can determine literary quality, who can say? But there's one thing a multitude of book-loving NPR types can most definitely do, and that's pick a list of books that will appeal to... book-loving NPR types. And librarians, whether they listen to NPR or not, make a very close match.

And are not book lists among our guiltiest pleasures?