IF libraries had tills they’d be chiming today like an orchestra of trianglists. In case the adverts, newspaper features and social media posts have passed you by, we are midway through Book Week Scotland, a nation-wide venture intended to raise the profile of Scottish literature, and to draw in audiences seeking something good to read.

This project reaches pretty much coast to coast, the idea being to coax people out on dark cold nights, or offer a brief escape from the office for a lunchtime literary fix. With something for all ages and interests, it is described by its organiser Book Trust Scotland as a “hooley”, although I’m not sure that quite captures the spirit at this dank, uninviting time of year, where it can be hard to raise an audience.

Now into its eighth year, Book Week’s Scotland emergence coincided with the decline in literary criticism, which in subsequent years has only got worse. These days, even the once illustrious Central Library in Edinburgh no longer stocks the Times Literary Supplement, the most comprehensive journal of reviews. Published weekly it is – or used to be – as useful for librarians deciding what to stock as for readers wanting to keep abreast of an ever incoming tide of titles. The other day, on being informed that the TLS was no longer available, as were a slew of newspapers and magazines that used to be a staple of the reading room, my husband, a former librarian, caused a detonation at the front desk. You can picture the library staff ducking for cover.

Since the first books came off the press, literary life has been conducted largely through recommendation, be it by professional review, or by informal channels, where readers share opinions with each other. While critics are becoming an endangered species, book festivals, reading groups and enterprises like Book Week Scotland are proliferating. The literary ecosystem, clearly, will not tolerate a void.

Last week we had a guest who, midway through the evening, put down her G&T and began to scribble in her notebook. On one page she listed the titles we were urging her to read; on another were those she thought we would enjoy, among them Attica Locke’s Bluebird, Bluebird, and Thomas Mullen’s Darktown and Lightning Man, both authors new to us.

Of course, as with electioneering, the problem with whatever recommendation or criticism you hear is whether you can trust the source. Take the BBC’s recent list of The 100 Novels That Shaped our World, compiled by a well-read panel: novelists Alexander McCall Smith, Juno Dawson and Kit de Waal, the TLS’s editor Stig Abell, and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup. As round-ups go, it includes many gems – James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day – but it also left me wailing at works of genius that had not made the cut. Where, for instance, were Robert Louis Stevenson or Alice Munro? Also galling was the absence of any category to sweep up great historical novels, such as those by Hilary Mantel or Rose Tremain. Only marginally less annoying were those I didn’t think merited a mention: Ken Follett, for instance, or George R R Martin. Lying in bed, I began to compile my own list. It was the recipe for a sleepless night.

A selection created by committee will almost inevitably be uneven, like a conversation in which five people talk over each other. Much more coherent and characterful is the list contained in a new book by arts journalist John O’Connell. Entitled Bowie’s Bookshelf, it is a record of the musician’s private bookshelf, including a countdown of his hundred best.

Once asked his idea of perfect happiness, Bowie replied, “reading”. Unlike a collaborative venture, his inventory was compiled with no thought of posterity, fashion, or box-ticking. Nor was he restricted, like the BBC team, to novels written in English. Hence the inclusion of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Lampedusa’s The Leopard. Created by someone with complete freedom to roam, it is simply a rollcall of the authors who have influenced him. It’s not exhaustive, but it does offer an outline of Bowie’s quicksilver mind and what made it shimmer: Money, by Martin Amis, T S Eliot’s The Waste Land, English Journey by J B Priestley. Browsing his selection feels a bit like exploring someone’s bookcases while they’ve popped out for milk.

Among Bowie’s choices are Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, both of which are on the BBC list. The majority, however, stray further afield. There aren’t too many by women, and there is non-fiction, poetry and memoir. These golden hits, though, are not the whole story.

A journalist interviewing Bowie on the set of The Man Who Fell to Earth in 1975 discovered that, wherever he went, he carried with him trunks containing 1500 books. That is a definition of luxury, the modern equivalent of royalty being carried by litter, followed by packhorses swaying with cases. For Bowie, being accompanied by his library was like carrying his home and loved ones with him. He doubtless knew that few things assuage loneliness or weariness better than a well-loved book.

Of course, whatever list you read, the question is how seriously to take it. There are so few people whose taste matches mine that I have half-read novels and biographies all over the house, given to me or bought under the influence of a friend’s hard sell. In this respect, I don’t even trust most of my nearest and dearest.

If nothing else, Book Week Scotland has started me thinking about my own choices down the years, and what this personal tally reveals. As well as vivid memories, what stares back at me are the glaring gaps, the terra incognita where my mind has yet to wander. That’s where startling, unexpected or even unreliable suggestions are crucial. If each of us compiled our top 100, we’d not only see the books that have shaped us up to this point, but also the parts of us that are still under construction. Lists, be they from David Bowie, the Beeb or your best friend, work towards creating what I think of as a literary version of Grand Designs: something original and timeless that is built to endure.