Says Lifehacker.
After some tinkering around on the sites they suggest, I found the Zeitgest on LibraryThing. It looks a bit like a store inventory, only less attractive and intelligible. Scanning the headlines for "Top Books," I began to understand how Leonard Bernstein might feel when confronted with the Billboard Hot 100. Although Americans are reading (a cause for some celebration), they've apparently been reading the same crappy books for the past three years. How else to explain the fact that "Eat, Pray, Love" came in 32nd in the Most-Read books section on GoodReads?
But choosing a new book to read is a difficult job in the best of times, "the best of times" meaning a lazy Sunday afternoon with plenty of time to settle down in a Barnes and Noble with a stack of paperbacks and a coffee, and slowly read the first chapter of each book before deciding which one to buy. (If that doesn't sound like heaven to you, then I don't know why you bother to believe in anything.)
And these aren't the best of times.
Unfortunately, no one seems to have perfected the art of online book recommendations. When I searched for "Philippa Gregory" (one of my favorite summer authors) on whatshouldireadnext.com, I got a list that included everything from Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha" to John Updike's "Brazil." I really don't think these three authors have that much in common.
The problem with throwing open book lists to everyone is the problem of democracy, maybe. There are 525 reviews for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" on LibraryThing, including one from a mysterious user who writes only "I predict this series is going to be a big hit" (in March 2011). It's impossible to tell whether he's trying to be ironic or he really has been living under a very large rock.
Another writes "Good read, fun, with dark parts." Which could really describe everything from Harry Potter to "Death in Venice."
And there are 523 more. It's more exhausting than going to the bookstore. More importantly, how do these people have the time to write up 3-page reviews for every book they've ever read, in the hopes of fine-tuning LibraryThing's algorithms enough that they'll actually get a useful book recommendation out of the exercise? Maybe I'm busy, maybe I'm lazy, but being a regular blogger means I already spend too much time casting words into an online void.
It occurred to me then that there are a lot of similarities between choosing a book and dating. The frustrations of LibraryThing are actually the frustrations of online dating (although imagine an online dating service where members could rate each other - I'm sure it would be a massive hit before it was shut down.) If that's the case, then people should choose a summer read using the same criteria they'd use to evaluate a potential summer fling.
1. Looks - Consider the "Wealth of Nations." It may be a classic, but it's not really in the same league as "The Border Vixen."
2. Fun-ness - A quick peek at the back views of these two books reveals the following blurbs:
Amazon on WoN: "In his book, Smith fervently extolled the simple yet enlightened notion that individuals are fully capable of setting and regulating prices for their own goods and services."
Meanwhile, BV: "A rollicking portrait of Scottish lass Margaret "Mad Maggie" Kerr, who is looking for a husband who "will be content to let me do what needs doing." Enter Edinburgh's handsome Fingal Stewart, dispatched by his cousin, King James V, to claim Maggie and get control of the passage. Not too surprisingly, Fingal not only succeeds with the test but also wins Maggie's heart."
3. Easy - the ideal summer book, like the ideal summer fling, shouldn't be hard to get.
4. Price - Kind of goes with #3. Spending a lot of money on a summer read probably isn't a great investment.
(Of course, there's probably a different set of criteria to use for choosing "school year" reading. And this is where my metaphor, for most purposes, falls apart anyway)
After some tinkering around on the sites they suggest, I found the Zeitgest on LibraryThing. It looks a bit like a store inventory, only less attractive and intelligible. Scanning the headlines for "Top Books," I began to understand how Leonard Bernstein might feel when confronted with the Billboard Hot 100. Although Americans are reading (a cause for some celebration), they've apparently been reading the same crappy books for the past three years. How else to explain the fact that "Eat, Pray, Love" came in 32nd in the Most-Read books section on GoodReads?
But choosing a new book to read is a difficult job in the best of times, "the best of times" meaning a lazy Sunday afternoon with plenty of time to settle down in a Barnes and Noble with a stack of paperbacks and a coffee, and slowly read the first chapter of each book before deciding which one to buy. (If that doesn't sound like heaven to you, then I don't know why you bother to believe in anything.)
And these aren't the best of times.
Unfortunately, no one seems to have perfected the art of online book recommendations. When I searched for "Philippa Gregory" (one of my favorite summer authors) on whatshouldireadnext.com, I got a list that included everything from Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha" to John Updike's "Brazil." I really don't think these three authors have that much in common.
The problem with throwing open book lists to everyone is the problem of democracy, maybe. There are 525 reviews for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" on LibraryThing, including one from a mysterious user who writes only "I predict this series is going to be a big hit" (in March 2011). It's impossible to tell whether he's trying to be ironic or he really has been living under a very large rock.
Another writes "Good read, fun, with dark parts." Which could really describe everything from Harry Potter to "Death in Venice."
And there are 523 more. It's more exhausting than going to the bookstore. More importantly, how do these people have the time to write up 3-page reviews for every book they've ever read, in the hopes of fine-tuning LibraryThing's algorithms enough that they'll actually get a useful book recommendation out of the exercise? Maybe I'm busy, maybe I'm lazy, but being a regular blogger means I already spend too much time casting words into an online void.
It occurred to me then that there are a lot of similarities between choosing a book and dating. The frustrations of LibraryThing are actually the frustrations of online dating (although imagine an online dating service where members could rate each other - I'm sure it would be a massive hit before it was shut down.) If that's the case, then people should choose a summer read using the same criteria they'd use to evaluate a potential summer fling.
1. Looks - Consider the "Wealth of Nations." It may be a classic, but it's not really in the same league as "The Border Vixen."
2. Fun-ness - A quick peek at the back views of these two books reveals the following blurbs:
Amazon on WoN: "In his book, Smith fervently extolled the simple yet enlightened notion that individuals are fully capable of setting and regulating prices for their own goods and services."
Meanwhile, BV: "A rollicking portrait of Scottish lass Margaret "Mad Maggie" Kerr, who is looking for a husband who "will be content to let me do what needs doing." Enter Edinburgh's handsome Fingal Stewart, dispatched by his cousin, King James V, to claim Maggie and get control of the passage. Not too surprisingly, Fingal not only succeeds with the test but also wins Maggie's heart."
3. Easy - the ideal summer book, like the ideal summer fling, shouldn't be hard to get.
4. Price - Kind of goes with #3. Spending a lot of money on a summer read probably isn't a great investment.
(Of course, there's probably a different set of criteria to use for choosing "school year" reading. And this is where my metaphor, for most purposes, falls apart anyway)
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