To What Genre does [Insert Title] Belong?

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

of course I do not wish you disturbed sleep, Nyssa (at least not in that way - there are many more enjoyable ways for that)

But I'll give you my own ignorance as an example how the statement above was meant
having no pleasure in endless variations of:

• patriotic $hero saves the world again
• successfully beating the crap out of
• hippie/gay/green/whatever communist $aliens
• by his superiour use of $techbabble shiny weaponry
• built by his equally patriotic $nerdfriend in his garage/cellar (because the evil gov cut the money for military research)

I avoided everything labeled mil-SF for years.
Sadly this seems the biggest label attached to the Vorkosigan Saga.

If it were not a lot of recommendations here pointing toother - far more important aspects of the plots background and characters - I'd still be ignoring a great stack of wonderful books...

Yes, tags/labels can be very annoying, misleading and just plain wrong! However, if one really has no idea as to the nature of the story, they really are a necessary evil. I do also find proper genre tags helpful when giving recommendations, or choosing what to read next.

I'll agree with you, though, I have no idea what in the world "[*]successfully beating the crap out of " is supposed to tell you.

[jgaiser]

As in the above example, tags can be pretty worthless.

I've been using Amazon's recommendation system (Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought) along with online reviews. So far it's working well for me.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

the only thing IMHO that labelling leads to is overseeing great books just because $_person put a genere label on it.

I suspect that this is counterbalanced (or more than counterbalanced) by the people who *do* read the book because it is in the preferred genre.

[TaureanBull]

I use "Download Metdata" for my kindle collection. You can find the genre tagged into your collection. But sometime the tags are just too many. You can choose the one which appeals more to you.

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by TaureanBull

I use "Download Metdata" for my kindle collection. You can find the genre tagged into your collection. But sometime the tags are just too many. You can choose the one which appeals more to you.

I do use Calibre, but not all of the books have metadata, or a working ISBN# that I can use to find metadata. That is why I was hoping for a site.

[TaureanBull]

hmmmm... Even if you get a website, it wont satisfy you. Tagging is a personal taste and needs to be done maually for best results. There would be multiple tags; most of them you would not have heard of!