Submitted by kevsfamouschili t3_z7vrh4 in books
I was updating my profile today looking at all the books I’ve read this year (a mix of horror and fantasy), and then found that there are “personalized recommendations”. I was intrigued, so I clicked and lo and behold, I’m only being recommended Colleen Hoover and romance novels? I feel like this app pushes romance novels so hard, I just want to discover more things that I may actually enjoy. Thoughts?
EDIT: misspelled the authors name
Goodreads, like pretty much everything on your phone, is a surveillance app that attempts to sell you and your preferences. Now and then, either because of a glitchy algorithm or because Harlequin put down substantial cash this month, it will attempt to nudge your tastes.
Well that basically explains it. I swear I thought it said personalized but maybe that was an assumption. Thanks!
Yeah, it says 'Because you enjoyed [insert title]', but it's still completely random and not at all relevant. It has based recommendations on books I rated really low too, so they're just full of it 😄
Because you can read [books]
So what is everyone’s opinion on the best goodreads-type site that isn’t spy or influence ware? You know, the “light side”/not evil of book recommendation/review sites…
I stick with Libby and Reddit mostly.
They are just glorified ads. That's the reason I don't use goodreads and removed my account.
That's not my experience. I have a mix of sci fi, horror, science non fiction, and modern lit and my personalized recommendations are pretty relevant. Uninteresting and mostly useless, but still relevant.
Ironically, I have a DNF shelf that they have recommendations for that are probably more interesting than my other shelves.
How many books have you shelved? That might be the problem. I've been on there for 8 years, so I have 350 books on my read shelf and 150+ on my "want to read" shelf.
That doesn't mean it's random. It just means that it's not accounting for the stars. It's giving equal weight to 1 star books and 5 star and recommending based on the simple fact that you are (or were) interested in those titles.
If you curate your shelves it will recommend based on each shelf and be more relevant.
If you’re looking for a reading app with recommendations that are good + tailored to what you actually read, try StoryGraph :)
I made an account last year and backlogged all the books I’d read prior. I’m at 241 books and 60 on my TBR shelf. I think there is one romance book I’ve read, I just find it funny that my recommendations are all “book tok” books
People are fear mongering. Goodreads is fine, but algorithm output is only as strong as the input. You aren't going to get good recommendations unless you are curating your shelves to your tastes. Sure, Amazon is trying to sell books, but they really don't give a shit if you buy Colleen Hoover or if you buy Philip K Dick.
The recommendations don't count ratings, just books. So create shelves based on your favorites or genres and they will recommend better books. It's not perfect, but you'll find some interesting stuff.
Libby is such an insane app
The UI has no business being as good as it is and it's free.
I hate Goodreads. I am content with the 8 or so book related subreddits, but have heard good things about Storygraph.
This section of Goodreads? I'm not sure if we're having the same experience, if so.
It’s a section titled “top picks for you” when in actuality it should say “most popular books on goodreads”
I didn’t know this but do not doubt it
I was never a GR user but I really love Storygraph.
Goodreads seems to use a simple correlation-based algorithm to determine recommendations instead of something more sophisticated like mood/pace/genre on StoryGraph. I’ve been recommended Dr Seuss after reading Shakespeare because so many people that shelved Shakespeare had already read Dr Seuss. Any algorithm that did more than basic correlation should have caught that that’s not a good rec. I think Colleen Hoover has been shelved alongside almost every book on the site just because of her popularity, and that’s probably part of why GR pushes it so much. That and Amazon sales.
I get recommended so many celebrity memoirs based on books I rated 1-2 stars. I’ve never shelved a celebrity memoir on gr. Drives me insane.
I'm not being shown the books you're being shown
Yep, I had screencapped part of mine because it's so different from what OP is describing.
Your local public library. Mine gives recommendations. You submit your criteria and anything you're not okay with and they will give you a list of books they think might work for you. It's fantastic.
I find StoryGraph so much more helpful than GR!
I recommend StoryGraph! It’s so much easier to figure out what you’ll like based on how each book is tagged. For example it’ll say the genre, as well as the pace, if it’s character or plot driven, whether it’s dark or lighthearted etc
I “tried out” StoryGraph just to see if I liked it, and ended up deleting my goodreads account a few months later
Yep! Indeed- and as far as I know, that’s how Libby “curates”; by passing on local library recommendations. Like November was indigenous people month, for instance.
I honestly used to find it pretty confusing up until a month or two ago. Between updates and finally getting the hang of it, I like it sooooo much more!
True that. And all good points. And I think most people probably aren’t too worried about the spy aspect. Personally, I’d rather support my local library, and have access to things that may not be on Amazon, such is out of print, or super independent.
I would be curious if GR actually suggest such items.
>It’s so much easier to figure out what you’ll like based on how each book is tagged.
We are like opposites. I look at those tags and I find them completely useless. Tries to reduce a book to selecting a shampoo or something.
On the Goodreads website you can also turn on and off what shelves are used in their recommendations. I used to like their recs but a lot of them were put of print so I haven't checked them out in a while. There s a "top picks for you" on the app but that just gave me a broad and seemingly random selection of high rated books in the genre.
Interesting! I found from using StoryGraph that there are patterns in my taste based on these clue words. I also like to know nothing about the plot before I start a book, which I realize it’s not common. But I know if it has a few of these qualities whether I’ll like it or not. For example, if I’m recommended a book by a friend, I would just add it to my huge TBR list on goodreads without a second thought. But if I go to add it on StoryGraph, and see it has some elements that I historically don’t enjoy, I know not to waste my time adding it to the pile. For me it’s very helpful.
I have 150 rated books, and my suggestions sucked based on that. I added a "want to read" shelf of a bit under 100 books and it tightened up the suggestions a lot. It shows me a lot of good stuff I wouldn't have found otherwise
If you want good recs off goodreads, find a book you like and check which "lists" it's been added to by other users. I've found a bunch of gems that way.
> I found from using StoryGraph that there are patterns in my taste based on these clue words.
I have tried to used storygraph but it is useless to me if it is slow or fast paced, humorous or nt (and you can tell a lot by blurb and cover) that does not tell me if it is is good or not. I like the eccentric shelves at good reads also.
> I also like to know nothing about the plot before I start a book, which I realize it’s not common.
That is a problem to select books you will like.
>For example, if I’m recommended a book by a friend, I would just add it to my huge TBR list on goodreads without a second thought.
I usually do that, and my friend's reviews and ratings and of those people I follow show up first and that is a really important filter for me.
>But if I go to add it on StoryGraph, and see it has some elements that I historically don’t enjoy, I know not to waste my time adding it to the pile. For me it’s very helpful.
Well, it can be important to prune TBR but not considering friend's recommendations because of some storygraph very vague words is not something which would work for me.
Like fiction fantasy adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced
that can be many many different books, some excellent, some fast paced, some with ludicruous non mysteries, some very bad...
But OTOH if it was showing me all my friends average rating of it was 4.68 or 3.0 that would be atotally different thing.
YMMV, just interesting how different things work for different people.
Try looking at shelf and see recommendations based on shelf by shelf. The more specialized a shelf is, the more rare books it has, the most likely the books it tries to recommend might be halfway interesting.
But sadly book recommendations is somehting no algorithm is good at, at least for me. People are really great at that, or some people are, for some genres and some specific other readers, but algorithms, no.
If you want good Goodreads recommendations, you need to create custom shelves and also enter a lot of books. My recommendations are pretty good now - the difference between, say, my custom Fantasy shelf versus the general Fantasy genre recommendations is night and day.
this is what i needed to hear. i’ve heard that StoryGraph is better, but i’m too lazy to transfer all that stuff. now that i know it does it for me i’m in
Yep, it’s pretty simple. You can export on Goodreads and it will create a file for you to download. Then upload it to Story Graph. If I recall correctly, it might take a bit to process it. Then you can see your recommendations.
Very interesting! I’m glad goodreads works well for you.
I didn’t even think to put manga in Goodreads, I’ve got a collection of well over 100. Is it by volume? Not sure if I want 50+ entries onto the app for a series
Weird, not my experience. I read a lot of anthropology related books since that’s the field I work in and that’s a lot of the books that Goodreads recommends to me. So I would disagree with the recommendations purely being ads because I definitely have been recommended some good books.
It's not necessarily insidious but it's not fear-mongering either. Substantial reason many apps exist is to scrape data and sell it. It is a constant invasion of any data they can get their hands on, and only recently have there been efforts (by Apple mostly) to fight back against it by giving you notices when apps are tracking location, adding "ask app not to track" popups (for tracking data across other apps !!), etc
At one point a friend of mine looked up his google data, it could literally tell when you lay down, when you lay down and are on your phone, location history, etc. Right now it's all commercial and I do admit I don't much care, but our phones are basically little spy implants.
Kind of a tangential rant. I also use GR just for keeping tracks of books, TBR and such.
Yeah StoryGraph recommendations aren’t perfect but I’ve definitely put a few of them on my TBR, and I can see the logic for most of them. It’s getting better as I read and rate more books too.
Not related to goodreads, but does sort of answer your question - if you want to discover totally new books I've found a great way to do it is use the Libby app (with your local library card linked) and browse the books by random until you see something that strikes you. You can narrow this down by audience (for example, just general adult fiction to exclude YA and children's) and to genre or subgenre beyond that. If you prefer physical media you can always by or borrow your chosen titles.
It is limited to what your library actually has, so a better funded system will offer you a wider variety. eBooks and audiobooks also tend to skew towards the more recently published.
Goodreads keeps recommending me whodunnits after I read a murder-free book about boxers. Not only do those books have nothing in common with the novel I read, I also rated almost all the murder mysteries I read badly.
But it is random. It's recommending me things that have nothing to do with the books I have on my shelves. It's even recommending me books in languages I don't speak. In any case, it's no big deal to me because I don't rely on those recommendations to find books. I just get a tiny kick out of seeing what random books it shows me next time I visit the page.
Yeah they became ads when Amazon bought them. The big A is only interested in getting us to buy more of what they can purchase large quantities of (if they convince 20k more people to buy a title they can get a bigger discount etc).
I have hundreds of books read and on my to read list and still the most basis recommendations on rince and repeat, so I'd argue otherwise.
Wait, Amazon owns Good Reads?
Yes they went on a buying spree several years ago (2013) and bought lots of smaller bookish companies. They didn't disclose price but it was rumored to be in the high hundreds of millions.
And yet you kept reading them
The industry as a whole pushes romance novels too - it's just that now they come in covers that from a distance could be mistaken for sword and sorcery, or sci-fi or mystery novels only for those exciting elements to just melt into the background a few pages in :) Imo the best way to get anything out of goodreads is to either browse the "similar to" of books you enjoyed, or just follow a few reviewers with similar taste. Anything more systematic seems to swirl into less specific recommendation pools very quickly.
I don’t find the mood tags very useful either, but their recommendation algorithm is amazing. I read 6 books it recommended me last year and I absolutely loved most of them and the other couple I rated 3ish stars but could still tell why they would be recommended to me. I think it’s really useful if you know what kinds of themes you like to read about - like, I told it that I like science fiction books about making first contact with aliens and historical fiction about natural scientists and literary fiction about sibling relationships and it’s recommended me all kinds of things that fit those categories or the overlaps between them.
Oh, I think algorytm can be a little bit "overwhelmed" by all the romance readers in that app. Trust me most of the users are romance lovers. Sadly, I don't know any other alternatieve.
I read sci-fi and fantasy. Most of the recommendations I get are within my interest. When I read something different for a book club I'm in, it goes a bit haywire but usually comes back around. But I never use it anyway, I look at thier user generated polls and lists when I'm looking for new books.
Goodreads is owned by Amazon
Coleen Hoover is a hot author rn because of TikTok
They are literally just advertisements
Y'all recommended Storygraph overall? I'm thinking of switching and the only reason I haven't is because I have friends on Goodreads that read regularly and I often get good recs off what they're reading. I do hate supporting Amazon though.
Unfortunately I feel like goodreads in not really that great for anything except for keeping track of what you're reading or following someone whose taste you trust, lists and recommendations are just not accurate and it seems like most times there's no connection between what you rated high and the recommendations you get except a similarity in genre. Average ratings and awards are also mostly a popularity contest limited to reflecting a particular section of readers.
And Goodreads hasn’t received much in the way of updates since then. I still use it, mostly out of habit, but it’s not what it once was.
On the webpage, they also have recommendations that are supposedly based on books that you've read. However, they are are often just bizarre. The most ridiculous one was "Because you enjoyed 'Barns of Wisconsin' you might like 'The Baby-sitter's Club Super Special #3'
I was like "um yeah, I don't think so Goodreads."
"Kept reading them" is a stretch because it's a while since I read the last murder mystery, but well... I had to find out somehow if I dislike the entire genre or just picked a bunch of books I would've disliked anyways.
And then there's me and they only recommend me books that are in other languages. I get that I read a lot of translated fiction but at least recommend me the ones that are already translated.
Personally, I never had Goodreads but adore storygraph! If you plan on switching you can also import your Goodreads data to your storygraph account :)
I especially love the stats and challenges Goodreads offers! Additionally, they seem to always be improving it.
It's true. Today's Goodreads recommendation for me?
"Because you enjoyed The Granny Curse and Other Ghosts and Legends from East Tennessee . . ." Bridgertons novels. ALL the Bridgertons novels.
Nothing against Julia Quinn, but WTH?
>I absolutely loved most of them and the other couple I rated 3ish stars but could still tell why they would be recommended to me.
Just curious, which were the books?
>I think it’s really useful if you know what kinds of themes you like to read about - like, I told it that I like science fiction books about making first contact with aliens and historical fiction about natural scientists and literary fiction about sibling relationships and it’s recommended me all kinds of things that fit those categories or the overlaps between them.
My problem is not finding books on a theme, or who fit a trope, I can google, I can ask friends or in places like reddit, there are goodreads lists, there are goodreads similar books. my problem is splitting the good books with themes I like from the bad books with themes I like! Literary fiction about sibling relationships, that is fine, but the problem is know which are good and which are really not good, but what the book is about.
I'm so grateful for the recommendation of StoryGraph as a replacement for Goodreads. GR had gotten almost dysfunctional on mobile and the Amazon connection is abhorrent. The banner ads are really irritating, too. Helpful article comparing the two apps: https://lahstalon.org/goodreads-versus-the-storygraph/
I've tried it and couldn't get used to it, and a lot of the cool features were paywalled behind a subscription. I hate subscription based services so that put me off as well.
I like Goodreads because it's simple and free, I just use it to log books, keep track of my yearly goal and see what others are adding.
Storygraph's recommendations aren't bad, but I prefer using Librarything for recommendations.
There used to be a cool Goodreads feature on the Kindle apps, but they removed it :(
The books were:
The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick — had never heard of this and would have never picked it up because of the low Goodreads rating, but I loved it, 5 stars.
Greenwood by Michael Christie — had never heard of this, it hit a bunch of the things I said I like in books (non-chronological structure, sci fi/historical fiction genre mix, ensemble cast, focus on natural history/ecology), but I didn't love it because of the pacing, 3 stars
The History of Bees by Maja Lunde — had never heard of this, loved it, 5 stars
Ship Fever: Stories by Andrea Barrett — had never heard of this, loved it, 5 stars
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell — already had this one my TBR and seeing the recommendation bumped it up in line, I loved it, 5 stars
The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager — had never heard of this, hit a bunch of things I like (folklore, sibling relationships, many timelines) but it was a bit too experimental for me, 3 stars.
>my problem is splitting the good books with themes I like from the bad books with themes I like!
I get that! So far, I've had good luck in the sense that I haven't tried any books that I thought were bad or objectively poorly written, just things that weren't perfectly to my taste. In the preferences survey, you get to answer some questions about what you think makes a good book in terms of writing style and characters and plot, so I think that helps. It'll be interesting to me as I keep reading recommendations to see if I start encountering books that I think are just bad or whether the algorithm really can tell what "good for me" means!
*I realized this might be important to know — I tend to rate about 10 books a year 5 stars, so this was an impressive showing in my opinion. I don't give out 5 star ratings willy nilly.
I originally hated the Storygraph, but I tried out a few other different trackers and ended up migrating back to the Storygraph and will now stay. I do think $50usd a year is a bit steep for a subscription to access “better” features, but from when I did my trial the only thing I used from it was the tags stats comparison. You also can’t contribute to their requests for features/roadmap unless you’re a subscriber, which I think sucks, but they’re pretty responsive on email to questions, and they genuinely do want to make it a better website, unlike GR who hasn’t done anything of note in the last ten years.
I literally just use Goodreads to keep track of every book I have read, and to not forget some books I plan on reading in the future. The reviews of books I like made me realize I can't use reviews to judge on what I should read.
Amazon also owns abebooks.com
Yup. I started in then went, 'This is gonna take forever.' I namaged for 20 minutes. Periodically, I go back and update the shelves. Also, be careful. I mistakenly added the german edition of Kanata no Astra and got a bunch of german recommendations for a bit.
It's not that the industry pushes romance novels. It's that that's what people buy (https://www.markinblog.com/book-sales-statistics/; look at the subgenre section).
I get that that can be kind of circular -- for example, a new writer might decide to write romance because they think that's what they can sell -- but it's not like the industry has some kind of agenda here, other than making money.
Science fiction/fantasy makes barely a third of the money of romance and erotica, and crime/mystery makes just about half.
I've been on GR since before Amazon bought them and the reccos have always been garbage. It's always twenty books from the same general genre as like, one maybe two books you've read.
I use the genre lists, user-made lists, shelving key words, etc. a lot more.
I LOVE LibraryThing and I don’t think it gets recommended enough. Their recommendations are great. I feel like I actually find unknown books through them. I feel like because the UI is kind of outdated it doesn’t get used as much but it is such an amazing website.
Yeah they stopped improving gr as soon as amazing bought it. I'll have to see if the free features are good enough for me - $50 is a bunch, but might be worth it?
Out of curiosity, do you remember which others you tried?
You're right that it's kind of self-selecting where people buy what gets pushed, etc., but my point was that those other categories are too diluted to even be meaningfully distinguished in recent output. Saying "romance" outsold "romance with wizard stuff" and "romance but someone did a murder" doesn't feel like a very meaningful metric. I'm not saying it's nefarious, I'm saying it's mindless- it's admittedly the same pattern as other industries where any prominent success has companies shouting for their talent to "give us one of those" to diminishing returns instead of looking for the crest of the next wave. Even video games have it where genre titles are all but subsumed into triple-a mulch that does a bit of everything but not to any depth. Thanks for the link though, it's an interesting snippet.
I think you may be getting thrown by the article's admittedly weird use of the word "subgenre"? It's not talking about sales of romance v. romance with wizard stuff. It's referring to "romance" as one subgenre of fiction, "crime and mystery" as another, etc. It's not talking about subgenres of romance. For what it's worth, I think paranormal romance does sell pretty weird and would generally be classified under romance, not fantasy, though there are of course plenty of novels categorized as fantasy with incidental or even more-than-incidental romance.
I do agree that writers can get too caught up/agents and editors can get too caught up in finding work that's similar to what's popular now rather than what'll be popular in the next wave. But I don't think anyone knows what'll be popular in the future -- there may be some reason to believe that, e.g., sci fi/fantasy will increase in market share because I think it may be more popular with younger generations, but it's certainly far from guaranteed.
Thanks for the clarification, but no, I understood it as you describe- imo it's just that so little billed as fantasy, etc., ever actually is. Regarding future trends, I think so many editors, authors, publishers are content enough in a period of relative stagnation to not even be looking for what's next.
This!! I’m reading literary fiction, poetry, non-fiction and classics. My recommendations? Several books about potty-training (I’m 21 so I hope it’s not the algorithm either) Also several books in languages I don’t speak?
It’s also because it’s becoming more of a trend now, and they’re pushing advertisements for that stuff because of social media but also because it’s owned by prime.
Romance readers are also more likely to be very voracious readers, if I remember correctly. So it makes sense that they would try to push romance.
OMG the books in other languages thing gets on my nerves! It's almost every time and every shelf with recommendations. The really frustrating part is when an interesting looking cover pulls me in then finding out I won't be able to read it. I never really noticed it until I added a few books that were originally published in the author's native language but I had read the English translation. My theory is the algorithm is recommending other books written in the original language. I wish there was a way to limit recommendations to certain languages.
Just FYI, you can block authors who have Goodreads pages, pretty sure it eliminates them from your reccs. Scroll aalllllll the way down to the small print asking if you want to block. Click, and wait a second or three for the system to update.
Is that a thing?? Til
Yes. I sub to r/romancebooks and a few weeks ago someone asked about how many books people had read. There were MULTIPLE comments in the 200-600 books PER YEAR range with most of the comments being in the 50-100 BPY range. I myself have read 62 so far this year and about 75-80% have been romance genre.
I never get any Goodreads recommendations but then again maybe I'm the lucky one for that
I have tons of books but I never shelve them they are in a big mishmash list
It makes it hard for the anti-romance people
I don’t read romance myself, but I’ve noticed the books tend to be smaller compared to some of the other genres - especially sci/fi and fantasy. I’m 2/3 of the way through Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy and it’s been refreshing how short they are (350 page range).
I mostly read romance and try and not get into anything over 400 pages
I’m at 50 most romances lol.. I feel bad now. buys a nonfiction book
The 50 Shades series were like 300+ pgs each. The 365 Days series are all 400+ pgs. Kresley Cole's The Game Maker Series are over 350 pgs each. And Katee Robert 's The O'Malley series are about the same. It really depends on both the author and sub genre. Most of the "harlequin romance" type books from Walmart are like 150 pages but a lot is in depth series are way more.
Most thrillers I feel are around 400 pages, give or take 50. Fantasy tho - those are typically 500 plus. Priory of the Orange Tree and Sanderson are both on my TBR 😅
Essentially this is what is happening.
I don’t doubt that, it’s just not something I have an interest in
so hard to take goodreads lists seriously when they always promote the same five lists which seem to all have a ton of overlap and also imply that you aren't allowed to die until you read at LEAST these 20,000+ popular titles
bruh if I live fifty more years at fifty books a year (optimistic), I'd be able to read less than a tenth of the contents of some of these MUST READ lists.
As others have stated, Goodreads is owned by Amazon so they often use similar databases to promote what is selling/popular to get even more sales. Colleen Hoover had multiple books in the top 10 best selling books of 2022 I believe, so they’ll be leaning into that.
I never use Goodreads for anything other than tracking my books as it is now quite influenced by the capitalist ideals of Amazon. I, like you, love horror and fantasy and that never seems to be what I get recommended.
I never read fiction. Never. It's been years. But I'll be reading something about culture and it recommends some weird paranormal romance. The funniest one though was when I was reading a social history of virginity and it recommended something about Star Wars.
Goodreads allows their users to set their own preferences, so if you like crime novels or a specific genre, you are allowed to go into your settings and set it up that way. You can also click on the "My Books" link at the top of the page and create Book Shelves that will allow you to have the type of books you enjoy recommended to you. For instance, I have a Book Shelf that I created that is titled "Not Interested In Reading". Those books, if I go to the far right of the column and uncheck the "recommend" box, will no longer be suggested. I also created a "Favorites" Book Shelf that I kept the "recommend" box checked. You can set up unlimited amounts of bookshelves like that, and use them if and when you have read a book and want to review it.
it's such a good resource for finding books. Their tagmasher feature is amazing for finding super specific things, the member recommendations are awesome for finding similar books to ones you like, and the algorithm even tells you if it thinks you'll like the book. So far I haven't even needed to use their recommendation page.
I think the UI is on par with goodreads, but people are more familiar with goodreads.
I have never paid attention to either Goodreads or Amazon "recommendations." When I do catch a glance, they seem to be best-sellers or genre books that are completely irrelevant to me -- and probably 99% identical to what pops up on everyone's feed. (Or else they're books that I've already searched on my own initiative.) The real question for me is: How do I get nt own books "recommended"? LOL
Okay so we’re all getting recommended the same books lol I’ve read a lot of thriller/horror/gothic this year. Not one horror recommendation 🤦🏾♀️🤷🏾♀️
What’ve been your favorites this year? I’ve been catching up on a lot of horror horror/thriller books and would love to add more to my list
Same and i like the book challenge every year. But i only read the bad reviews bc they’re usually pretty comical
Well this was my first year getting into Stephen king (decades late i know) and i really am loving his stuff. Older stuff is harder to find of course but i love his writing style. I also have read some old vampire books this year Dracula, Camilla, etc those were slow but eerie which i loved. I just finished up necroscope by Brian lumley which was amazing! Idek where i found it but I’m glad i did It’s a trilogy and I’m getting the other two very soon.
Hey no judgement! I just started Stephen Kings works last year! So far I’ve read it, dreamcatcher, elevation, the institute, a couple of his short story collections, and the gunslinger. Not much in terms of his whole works, but I’m really glad I decided on it. Next up for me is finishing the dark tower saga.
well that explains a lot. thank you
The institute was my first read! I loved it so much! I read firestarter, thinner (under his pseudonym richard Bachman), the cell and night watch. He has so many lol i hope you like the dark tower series I’ve heard that it’s pretty extensive as far as how in depth the world of it is.
The WaPo just took a look at how much Amazon advertises on its own site and how it aggressively promotes paid content in your search results. I can't imagine GoodReads is exempt from railroading you with sponsored content.
The fact this is coming from wapo who are also owned by Bezos is deeply ironic. Like I don't doubt the article however the circumstances are funny
Life's too short. Read what you want.
The author points out as much in the middle of the article. One of the features of journalism is that the editorial side remains independent from owners, publishers and sales. The typical approach when reporting on one of them is to note the conflict of interest in the article. This isn't ironic or funny, this is S.O.P. and normal. We're just being assaulted by bad journalism, entertainment masquerading as journalism and propagandists that we're forgetting this is how it's supposed to work.
> The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick — had never heard of this and would have never picked it up because of the low Goodreads rating
OK, some advice, and that is for goodreads, or amazon, or any place really. Unless you are really sure your taste matches exactly the average, mode, taste of the people rating in a certain place do not include or exclude books because of average rating. Take a look at the high ratings and low ratings, see which reviews strike you as more you.
Great you got great recs.
> It'll be interesting to me as I keep reading recommendations to see if I start encountering books that I think are just bad or whether the algorithm really can tell what "good for me" means!
Not just the algorithm, but the data the algorithm uses, which depends on the quality of questionnaire, but also on the quality of the reviewers which rated those metrics. I am somewhat dubious it will be reliable forever but I hope it keeps working for everybody who is happy with it.
>I don't give out 5 star ratings willy nilly.
Me neither, I understood. I did not like the Sparrow much (Mary Sue is kind of my main memory) and I would not get into the comet seekers. I would not have given you good recs! ( Though wild guess, if you do like sf, maybe you would like Connie Willis more serious books, maybe... though her only story about alien contact is a kind of a Christmas romp and very different in tone from those books).
Frankly, their recommendations suck.
Hi not sure if you have already done this but in the personal recommdations section you can select which genres you want recommdations in. My recommdations still aren't perfect to the books I have read but at least they are in the correct genres! Hope this helps!
Goodreads is a brainwashing tool of the Illuminati—
lyrasbookshelf t1_iy8biws wrote
They're random and not based on what you've read.