For new book readers, one of the trickiest aspects of book reading can be deciding what to read. Especially if you like fiction. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what's a great book, so recommendations often don't work at all. Many of my favorite books are not the best, they're just fun to read. Maybe even formula-based books, but with a formula that works for me. For example, I don't miss a single new release of Vince Flynn or Brad Thor. But other similar popular writers aren't worth my time because they just aren't fun for me to read.
Even worse, you can't tell if you are going to like a book by the first page, first paragraph, first chapter or whatever. I know that many people think you can tell, but I don't believe it. I really don't enjoy the first pages of Dickens books, but once I've invested enough into the book to get a feel for the main characters I'm absolutely hooked. Other books are really fun for the first chapter or so, like Pride and Prejudice, and then I can't make myself finish the book because it just goes on and on when I wish it would get to something interesting again. When it never seems to become fun again, I put it aside, frustrated about the time I wasted being bored. Or maybe I get lost in the details and it gets to be too much work to follow along. At any rate, there doesn't seem to be any great way to tell if I'm going to like a book or not, even with the recommendations of other honest and helpful readers.
But if you combine various recommendations that tell you what readers liked and disliked about the book and what other types of books they like, read a couple of reviews and book descriptions, and read a sample chapter or two, the odds of picking a good book really go up. You get a little bit of detail that helps you decide if the real characteristics of the book are what you like, or what turn you off.
That reminds me a whole lot of a personalized music streaming service called
Pandora. They aim to play just the music you like, while keeping some variety and helping you to discover new artists along the way. If you like music, I'd highly recommend it.
What's most interesting is that they use an analysis of the relevant characteristics of music to match you to the music you like.
Quote:
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Since we started back in 2000, we have been hard at work on the Music Genome Project. It's the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Together our team of fifty musician-analysts has been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound - melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics ... and more - close to 400 attributes! We continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country
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My thought for today is that something similar should work great for books as well. Study what makes books worth reading and fun or valuable. Ask people what books they like and don't like, and why. Provide a catalog of book qualities and use it to provide a personalized stream of book recommendations that can be evolved with your additional input about books you've read. In other words, do something a little deeper than Netflix or the standard social book recommendation sites. It's all the more important for books than songs - you can waste a lot more time and effort on a bad book than a bad song.
We need a better way to get book recommendations. Sure, Pandora messes up sometimes as well. But even when they recommend something I don't like, at least I can see why they recommended it, and start to learn for myself what I don't like. It's a recommendation method that gets into the details that matter, and shares the "thinking" with me. In my opinion, that's just what we need in the e-book world.
Note: In the comments, Erik (aka eaderigt) has supplied a link to the BookLamp service, which seems to be very much along these lines. They are just trying to get off the ground, but it seems promising..