I don’t mean to say readers shouldn’t abide by the suggestions of their trusted critic or columnist, family bibliophile, Substacker or BookToker. As a society, we do not lack for individual opinions about books, and many of those opinions are reliable. So by all means, take recommendations from me and Dua Lipa.

But I put extra store in prizes’ ability to affect and encourage collective reading because so much of their value, albeit unseen, comes from the collective act of judging — discussing, debating, deciding — and the subsequent broadcasting and coverage of those choices. When effort is made to put together a group of judges with diverse backgrounds and artistic experience, it shows in the output.

This year’s Booker Prize committee is admirably idiosyncratic, and so is the longlist it selected. I’ve had a soft spot for the Booker since the halcyon late 1980s and early ’90s wins for Kazuo Ishiguro, A.S. Byatt, Peter Carey and J.M. Coetzee. More recently, last year’s longlist led me and my book club to “Seascraper,” a small but mighty novel by Benjamin Wood about the hopes and dreams of an English shrimp catcher. I am 100 percent certain I would not have bought that book had it not been cited by the Booker judges, and I’m as grateful to them as if they had given it to me directly.

Imagine if the Television Academy ditched its broad-based secret balloting and instead just invited Mike White, Shonda Rhimes, Taylor Sheridan, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Bowen Yang into a room to duke it out over best drama. I would absolutely watch whatever winning show they told me to watch — the quirkier, the better.

As the trend lines for reading descend — and time spent scrolling, viewing, favoriting and following goes up — I take heart in the willingness of individuals to keep seeking the magical connection that imaginative literature can provide. Sometimes the connection is private, and sometimes it’s shared with other readers, but either way, it’s inherently personal. Awards, with their rare power to grant credibility in a cacophonous world and their equal capacity to provoke conversation, remind us that subjectivity is part of the risk and value of consuming art.