Recommendations. Do you use LT's recommendations feature? Have you found any good books by using it? Do you use the anti-recommendations, or the "special sauce" recommendations? How do you find out about books you want to read?I don’t find Library Thing’s recommendations very helpful and do not use them. It comes up with such obvious recommendations: I have some Jose Saramago in my library so I would like other books that he has written or I have some Franz Kafka in my library so I would enjoy reading a biography about him. I am not saying these recommendations are wrong, just obvious. The unsuggester recommendations seem to all be books about Christianity which apparently is a typical response judging from other posts. The member recommendations seem way off base to me. I liked Good Omen’s so I should like the Eyre Affair and Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff? I loved Good Omen’s but wasn’t thrilled with either the Eyre Affair or Lamb, both of which I thought were good concepts that didn’t live up to their potential.
I have no problems finding lots of books that I would like to read. I subscribed to Book magazine before it went out of business and now to Bookmarks magazine and always find interesting suggestions there. The best source are friends who share your reading tastes but unfortunately that is not as common as I would like which is why I have turned to the internet. I get so many ideas from both web sites and emailed newsletters such as the New York Times Book Review as well as numerous bookish blogs. Some books just grab me after just reading one review and I know I have to have it like Carl V’s review of Wastelands. Most books I will read one review and then if I start reading about it on the blogs I will really consider it. At the moment the Lace Reader and Gargoyle both seem hot books that I will keep in mind as I read more about them. I also tend to get interested in a subject or genre and follow that path for a while. Recently I was in the mood for science fiction and came across Tor's new web site that is currently giving away free ebooks many of which were already on my wish lists. There are far more books in the world then I will ever have time for and I have at least a couple of years worth of books to be read in my house so I never really need to search for books. Books just seem to find me and I cannot resist them.
1 comment:
I was excited to see that Tor had a free downloadable short story by John Scalzi, one of my fav's, set in his Old Man's War universe. I quickly copied that onto my hard drive for a read later on.
I don't really use Library Thing but I do find the recommendations section on both Amazon and Netflix amusing. Sometimes they come up with great things that I didn't know where available, but more often than not they are the obvious recommendations or make no sense whatsoever. Just goes to prove that we are a long way from computers and robots taking over the world! ;)
Glad to hear that you enjoyed Good Omens. I really enjoyed The Eyre Affair but have not heard of the other. Now Good Omens is far better than Eyre, but I enjoyed them both.
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