Journal

Friday, December 15, 2006

Extremely unsuggestive...

I think I have fallen in love with the LibraryThing unsuggester. It's the LibraryThing utility that tells you how unlikely people who own one book are to have another.

http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester

I am, apparently, the anti-John Grisham, at least as far as Sandman goes. If you have a Sandman graphic novel you are statistically much less likely to be reading John Grisham than the public at large. (http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester/861076). The unsuggester of American Gods would imply that if you read Christian dating books, you are very unlikely to own a copy of American Gods, and in fact the unsuggestions for American Gods are Christian books all the way (http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester/5678). I thought this was probably to do with the title, but it's also true of Stardust (although if you own Stardust you are also less likely than most people to own Dr Atkins' Diet Revolution -- http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester/897410) and of all my other novels. Except Coraline, for which it is also true, but in which unsuggestion list Vogue Knitting On the Go: Socks Two can also prominently be found.

(Incidentally, the unsuggestion for Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-mist is James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester/45057) . And what do people who like Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space have against Stephen King? (http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester/17036)

And via Mark Evanier, I learned about this blog, and thus spent far too long reading about corrections made in newspapers and magazines this year... strangely gripping stuff: http://www.regrettheerror.com/2006/12/crunks_06_the_y.html#more