> Curated lists are nice but what makes this list "awesome"?

I suspect a modern fad of using inappropriately effusive adjectives to hype mundane programming stuff.

“Awesome” lists are apparently A Thing on GitHub (1). I’ve been seeing them roll through pretty regularly.

1. https://github.com/bayandin/awesome-awesomeness

Unless the title been has changed since you posted your comment, it is a list of "awesome books", not an "awesome list" of books. But, I agree, to make the list useful, there really needs to be some explanation as to why the book is awesome.