I was poking around on LibraryThing.com, as I often do, and noticed that there were 90,000 titles tagged “to be read”. Of all of the tbr-tagged titles, I had read 3 of them; my favourite by far being The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. This is an engaging and poignant tale of a man who pops out of present time to travel either into the past or future. His wife is left alone, never knowing when or where she will see her husband. It is an interesting comment about loneliness within a relationship, as well as a compelling and modern exploration of how deep love can withstand all challenges.
Another book on this list that caught my eye was Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. Definitely next on my own ‘to read’ list.
Librarything just announced the winners of their cookbook pile contest. The object of the game was to take the most interesting photo of your pile of cookbooks for fabulous cash and prizes.
You can take a look at the winners and runners up here
Librarything has announced a neat new feature where users can sign up to receive advance copies of books in exchange for writing reviews.
Somebody should recommend LibraryThing to this writer on The Guardian, who just can’t stop wondering what books people have on their bookshelves.
LibraryThing.com members attended a ‘party’ in the Second Life 3-D virtual world at the weekend. It seemed very successful, especially as a Second Life newbie turned up naked after losing her clothes and being unable to recover them. I know a few people who have this problem at ‘this life’ parties.
Following the official launch of BookHints at AbeBooks.com yesterday, we have a few interesting observations about this book recommendation system based on the collections of LibraryThing.com members.
Most people who own a so-called literary classic, like say Moby Dick , are highly likely to also own other classics - perhaps Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Gulliver’s Travels. The same can be said for cookbooks where the recommendations returned are usually other cookbooks such as when you search for Rachael Ray.Â
But when you start looking for more specialized books and niche titles then the recommendations get quite diverse. A search for American Psycho returns books dealing with drugs, violence and bizarre car wreck-related sex (Trainspotting, Fight Club, and Crash) but all deal with the psychological effects on humans so you can see why people who enjoy Brett Easton Ellis would own these other books.Â
Some suggestions can seem counter intuitive at first, but really make a lot of sense. A search for Lesbianism Made Easy brings back picks that you would expect: So You Want to be a Lesbian and something by Ellen Degeneres. The more surprising recommendation is The Baby Name Survey Book but makes a bit more sense when you think of the growing number of same sex female couples who are adopting or using sperm donors in order to have children.
A book called Selling Women Short (which tackles the alleged exploitation of women by Wal-Mart) recommends a complete mixed bag of books, ranging from women in the punk culture to women fighting in the Vietnam War to straight forward feminism to black men and masculinity. I guess a book about masculinity makes the list because it looks at exploitation like the very first book search for - Selling Women Short.
Today, we’re thrilled to unveil BookHints on AbeBooks.com and AbeBooks.co.uk. BookHints is a unique book recommendation system based on the personal libraries of LibraryThing.com members.
LibraryThing.com is a social networking and book cataloging site for booklovers. Check out this article from Saturday’s New York Times to see how the mainstream media is just starting to understand why LibraryThing - a classic Web 2.0 website where the users create the content - is so special.
When you now search for a book on AbeBooks and click through to a listing, you are presented with up to six recommendations for books you might also wish to read. BookHints generates recommendations based upon titles found on the bookshelves of like-minded readers who also own the book originally sought.
At the moment, 10% of AbeBooks’ 100 million listings have recommendations attached to them so don’t be alarmed if you click on some listings and don’t see a set of BookHints. We’re going to be working hard to increase the number of recommendations.
So why have we introduced BookHints?
Well, AbeBooks has never been website designed for browsing books. Traditionally, the majority of our customers know exactly the book they want to buy (usually something that’s become hard to find) but there are also a large number of people who come to AbeBooks unsure about that they want to read next. All too often, these people attempt to browse but end up looking at books that have no relevance to their interests.
We think BookHints will help these browsers find their next read.
Before its official launch to the public, I spent a long time cruising through AbeBooks’ listings and looking at BookHints recommendations. They worked for me. I went through the classics, modern fiction, military history, chick lit, sex manuals and many more genres. Often, I was surprised, and intrigued, by the recommendations in a set of BookHints.
BookHints are unique because they are really an insight into what’s on other people’s bookshelves. We’re excited about them and we hope you enjoy them too.
Following my post of a few weeks ago, the list of the 10 books you can’t live without has been posted on the World Book Day Web site:
None of my top 10 made the list, but it’s interesting to note that similarities with the LibraryThing top 10.  Combining the Harry Potters, the LT list looks like this:
The 155,331 LT members who’ve catalogued their books list what they actually own, so they two lists are essentially what people say they can’t live without, and what they actually don’t live without. There are still quite a few classics on the LT list, but Dan Brown, Tolkien, and even Mark Haddon show up too - and the Bible is noticeably absent. Of course, none of my top 10 show up on either list - I’m not sure if that’s a bad thing or a good thing though.
Yesterday’s Boston Globe had an article on one columnist’s favourite books on alternative medicine.
The Guardian gives LibraryThing.com a nice write up today - LibraryThing just keeps getting bigger and bigger. More than 10 million books have now been catalogued by its members.
It seems that one keen ‘thingamabrarian’ (a member of LibraryThing.com’s community) found a new way to showcase books. Using librarything this gentleman created a poster showing every title he had read. It also includes directions explaining how you too can do this for your own list of books that you have read, own, or just like.
Tim from LibraryThing is constantly amazing me. I’ve been testing his UnSuggester, which recommends the books you are unlikely to read if you own/have read another. It’s fun to plug in your favourite titles or bestsellers and see what the opposite reads are.
Another great book thing today is My Penguin: classic books with blank covers that the reader can design or decorate personally. If you scan a copy of your cover and send it in to Penguin, they’ll even post it on their website.
I think some great literary jokes could be played by taking the blank covers of the Penguin titles and replacing them with the covers of the UnSuggester’s picks. Readers who picked up Girls in Pants (Sisterhood of Traveling Pants) by Ann Brashares might enjoy Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment after finding it inside the covers, and who knows, maybe readers of Web Standard Solutions by Dan Cederholm would appreciate the romance in Jane Austen’s Emma?
Our friends at Librarything.com have been busy again. Now they’ve launched an ‘Unsuggester” feature, which is the direct opposite of Amazon’s ”customers who bought this item also bought” tool. You can put in a book that you’ve read and find out what books you’re never going to read.
For instance, I put in Stitch ‘N Bitch by Debbie Stoller, and Librarything tells me that I’m not going to be reading How To Read The Bible For All Its Worth by Gordon D Fee
For Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I was un-recommended Velvet Elvis: Repainting The Christian Faith by Rob Bell.
Librarything’s blog proudly describes the Unsuggester as “the worst recommendation system ever devised.”