The sub's booklist has been of tremendous help to me (and I assume many other users as well) who are curious to learn about histories from regions quite often not our own. While this is the case, I also felt that the selection of books for the region of South Asia/the Indian Subcontinent can be considerably expanded considering the sheer amount of historical material available regarding the region and the absence of more sub-regional histories in the list, considering that many of these sub-regions such as Bengal, Punjab, the Indo-Gangetic plain, Tamil country and so on are comparable to, or are significantly larger then, many similar European countries or regions. While it could be argued that more specialised sub-regional histories can be covered through questions and answers in the sub, the sad reality is that a lot of questions regarding South Asia/ the Subcontinent remained unanswered for long with the posts eventually getting locked, leaving a noticeable gap on content regarding a very large part of world history. I speak of this region because I am most familiar with it, it is likely that similar expansions for other regions in the world can be done as well. Plus its anyway been a while since the list has been updated. Again, I must emphasise that this is not a critique as such of the current booklist as even in its current form it has been a tremendous source of knowledge for me regarding regions I knew previously very little about, this is just a suggested means of expansion.
Adding more to the booklist can good, but there are two issues. One is time of flaired users. You note that posts on South Asian/Indian Subcontinent topics might go unanswered. The reason for that is the same that portions of the booklist is barebones- only a limited number of the already limited number of flaired users are able to contribute to those topics, and of those experts in South Asian/Indian Subcontinent maybe not all of them feel interest in or have the time to put together the book recommendations and synopsis.
So until such a time when more are added, there isn't much point in adding blank sections to placehold, since, again, actually adding and changing stuff to the booklist requires a mods time, attention and motivation. And say if a flair gives 1 book list recommendation on the Bengal region, it is MUCH easier to slot it in the appropriate already existing sub category (since it will probably already fit fairly nicely in a time period), than it is to start adding (and potentially breaking things) new categories.
I'm pretty sure that "work on the booklist" is one of the ongoing projects for the mod team, but it is a slow, volunteer driven process.
Hey there, this is a great question! There's several area's I'd love to see expanded in the booklist (And in the FAQ, or questions on the sub, or in podcasts, etc etc), but my little list there is actually one of the bigger reasons we just havent seen that expansion yet.
The booklist is a fully volunteer based collaborative project between those on the flair panel. And that means it kinda relies on not only having an expert on that subject to offer ideas or review books, but also have the time to draft up the list and keep it maintained. Behind the scenes we actually often have a couple of revamps in progress, or people slowly chipping away at their favorite section. Unfortunately it takes a lot of work, and its a busy time in the world right now. I'd love to see major expansions in several areas, but it needs the right stars to align, allowing the right person to have the right time free to tackle a pretty big project.
Like /u/Holy_Shit_HeckHounds says, its a slow process and just from an organizational perspective its easier to sort things into bigger groups when there would only be one or two books in a smaller section. and believe me, I'd love to have more Indian history getting its time in the limelight on the sub, or a host of other overlooked but deserving subjects. But just havent been lucky enough yet.
But super glad to see you getting such good use out of the booklist! Its been invaluable to me over the years. (I routinely grab neat looking books off the list and send my library requests to buy them. I'm on a first name basis with the local procurer!) The more attention the book list gets, and the more people know it gets used, stuff like that drums up more interest in adding things!