Slashdot Mirror
Unsuggester: Finding the Book You'll Never Want
Selanit writes "Lots of socially-oriented sites provide suggestions for things you might like based on user-provided data. But how many can claim to offer you things you'll probably hate? LibraryThing, the social book-cataloging site, has used its database of personal libraries to create UnSuggester, which does exactly that. You type in a book you like, "It analyzes the seven million books LibraryThing members have recorded as owned or read, and comes back with books least likely to share a library with the book you suggest." For example, apparently readers of Edward Said's "Orientalism" rarely purchase "Ella Enchanted" by Gail Carson Levine. Who'd have thought? Quirky though it may be, the tool seems an interesting way to broaden your horizons. If you're a hidebound, crufty old fogey, I un-recommend it!"
Just in time for the holiday shopping season!!! Revenge for all the ugly shirts, sweaters and every other "squishy' gift. [Evil laugh]
/whisper/ Thanks for the candy!
Apparently, not enough people have read The Art of Fisting, so there are no "opposite" books to read.
What's next? Social misanthropy sites?
Ninjas and pirates. How piquant.
It was a static HTML page containing the bibliography of Dan Brown.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Probably a better way to broaden your horizons is to enter a book that you read (or started to read) and knew you hated. Then it might tell you about some books you may like. It won't always work because it isn't tailored to your own tastes (your own likes/dislikes) so there aren't two poles in the general evaluation but at least it may give you some ideas and even open you up to some other genres of books.
It looks like the server just unserved it.
It kept recommending the Bible.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Those of you who have bought will NOT like....
Zen Buddhism --- War in 3 Easy Steps
Idiots Guide to become a Stock Broker --- Honor and Ethics
The Holy Bible --- Pedophiles in our World
Guide to Windows Vista --- Kama Sutra
It might help if every Slashdotter wasn't typing in his favorite science fiction book (i.e., "The Joy of Sex"). The website is slower than a snail in heat.
You'll simply hate Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Who'da thunk that nerds don't have an appreciation for mid-19th century English Lit. And vice versa.
How did slashdot know that, based on my use of search engines and other meta-ish things to find things that I want, need, or would like, that the thing the article describes is exactly something I won't use! It works so well that even posted summaries about articles about it are un-compelling. For extra credit, mod this comment overrated so more people will read it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
...simply click here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catherine-Cookson-Complete -Collection-Disc/dp/B0009PZ8I0
Although, to tell the truth, although I've programmed in many languages, and read Wuthering Heights, I've never actually programmed in Lisp... may be there's something to this...
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
are you sure?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I tossed Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" in there to see what I might not like to read and to my surprise the result was a great deal of Terry Pratchett.. Of course, like many others, I love Pratchett and I've read most of the Discworld series...
I was going to toss Pratchett in there and see if King was the result, but with the slashdotting of the site, I think that will have to wait..
I must remind myself to never get listed on the frontpage of slashdot...
XenoPhage
Technological Musings
inside-book-search@google.com and anything is possible. A negative search can be just as valuable as a positive one.
All I say is by way of discourse, nothing by way of advice
not purchases.
I've purchased many books it turned out I didn't like, and I didn't recommend.
I'd rather see a "You liked these books, which indicate the following books may also be for you, and the other books here won't be as interesting, based on reviews of other users."
Rather than a "Users who bought this book also bought that book!"
I dunno, say something that takes your oppinion on a book, such as:
"Book A", 8 of 10
and then comes up with:
The top three books for people who gave "Book A" an 8 of 10 are:
"Book B"
"Book C"
"Book D"
The bottom three are:
"Book E"
"Book F"
"Book G"
The top three books for people who gave "Book A" greater than 5 out of 10 are:
"Book B"
"Book H"
"Book I"
hmm... slashdotters unite! We could make this!
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
obviously, prior art exists, no patent forrrr you. the spammers have been using this engine for years.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
A site which suggests which Slashdot stories I won't like, including dupes?
I liked Wuthering Heights.
Don't really care for Lisp (more of a PROLOG kinda guy).
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Read all comments on this story as +1, instead of +5.
Have you read my journal today?
I wrote "Lord of the Rings", and it "unsuggested" : "Knitting on the road : sock patterns for the traveling knitter by Nancy Bush"
You're all missing the good thing: type in a book you loath and it will come up with a good one instead! Perfect for changing Christmas gifts!
I typed in "Da vinci code" and it came back with (amongst others) two Lisp books and Knuth's Art of Programming (3 volumes). If that isn't a good alternative to world famous besteller author Dan Brown's biggest cash cow...
the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy pulls up some book about the bible.. sounds good to me
Reminds me the Book Mill in Montague, Massachusetts, whose slogan is "Books you don't need in a place you can't find." The Bookmill is a good place to look for books you didn't know you wanted.
Another good place is the New England Mobile Book Fair. The fact that the "mobile book fair" is a huge, stationary building tips you off that there's something quirky here. This huge bookstore in Newton, Massachusetts is only good for two things: finding one specific title, or pursuing utter serendipity.
Its slogan should be "Books you can't find in a place that has them all." OK, it doesn't have all of them, but your chances of finding a specific title there are way higher than at Barnes and Noble.
You see, for unknown reasons--I assume the bulk of their business must be supplying schools or something--their books are organized, first by binding (paper or hardbound); then, by publisher; and, within publisher, by title. You don't realize how bizarre this is until you experience it. After all, even if you know the title you often don't know the publisher, so the first step in finding any specific book is to look it up in their electronic copy of Books In Print.
Once you've found the book, even if you are curious about other books by the same author and are correct in suppose they're published by the same publisher, you still can't find them because they're not alphabetized by title.
Oh, and did I mention that they double-shelve their books, so even if you know the binding, publisher, title and they have it, it may not be visible on the shelf?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Every time I enter something from my large, diverse personal library, all I get in return are various books by Jon Katz.
-----------------------
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester/3697
Every single unrecommendation for Hitchhiker's guide is a religious/Christian themed book...
I don't know how to interpret that, any ideas?
1. New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (New Testament Commentary) by Simon J. Kistemaker (expected 21.9, found 0; unsuggestions)
2. The five points of Calvinism : defined, defended, documented by David N. Steele (expected 19.9, found 0; unsuggestions)
3. Ashamed of the gospel : when the Church becomes like the world by John MacArthur (expected 19.3, found 0; unsuggestions)
4. An introduction to the New Testament by D. A. Carson (expected 26.8, found 1; unsuggestions)
5. Charismatic chaos by John MacArthur (expected 17.2, found 0; unsuggestions)
6. The master plan of evangelism by Robert Emerson Coleman (expected 23.7, found 1; unsuggestions)
7. Calvin's Commentaries (22 Volumes) by John Calvin (expected 22.5, found 1; unsuggestions)
8. Just like Jesus by Max Lucado (expected 20.7, found 1; unsuggestions)
9. The dangerous duty of delight by John Piper (expected 19.7, found 1; unsuggestions)
10. A Godward life : savoring the supremacy of God in all life by John Piper (expected 19.5, found 1; unsuggestions)
11. More ready than you realize : evangelism as dance in the postmodern matrix by Brian D. McLaren (expected 18.8, found 1; unsuggestions)
12. Counted righteous in Christ : should we abandon the imputation of Christ's righteousness? by John Piper (expected 18.6, found 1; unsuggestions)
13. Becoming a contagious Christian by Bill Hybels (expected 18.4, found 1; unsuggestions)
14. Resident aliens : life in the Christian colony by Stanley Hauerwas (expected 18.2, found 1; unsuggestions)
15. The First Epistle to the Corinthians by Gordon D. Fee (expected 17.6, found 1; unsuggestions)
16. And the angels were silent by Max Lucado (expected 17.4, found 1; unsuggestions)
17. He chose the nails : what God did to win your heart by Max Lucado (expected 17.2, found 1; unsuggestions)
18. Paul in fresh perspective by N. T. Wright (expected 17.2, found 1; unsuggestions)
19. New Testament history by F. F. Bruce (expected 16.8, found 1; unsuggestions)
20. Stepping heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss (expected 16.6, found 1; unsuggestions)
21. Disciplines of a godly man by R. Kent Hughes (expected 16.6, found 1; unsuggestions)
22. The art of innovation : lessons in creativity from IDEO, America's leading design firm by Tom Kelley (expected 16.2, found 1; unsuggestions)
23. Handbook of denominations in the United States by Frank Spencer Mead (expected 16.2, found 1; unsuggestions)
24. New Testament introduction by Donald Guthrie (expected 16.2, found 1; unsuggestions)
25. Rediscovering expository preaching by John MacArthur (expected 16, found 1; unsuggestions)
26. Shepherding a child's heart [sound recording] : audio book by Tedd Tripp (expected 26.5, found 2; unsuggestions)
27. Decision making & the will of God : a Biblical alternative to the traditional view by Garry Friesen (expected 15.8, found 1; unsuggestions)
28. An unstoppable force : daring to become the church God had in mind by Erwin Raphael McManus (expected 15.8, found 1; unsuggestions)
29. Trusting God by Jerry Bridges (expected 15.6, found 1; unsuggestions)
30. The supremacy of God in preaching by John Piper (expected 24.3, found 2; unsuggestions)
31. Seeing and s
I tried to do something similar in concept the other day, clicking around last.fm in search of someone with whom I did not share a single common artist.
The closest I got was one MrLag, with whom the only commonality was U2 and Dido :-)
(Of course, my "musical opposite" should have listened to about the same number of artists/tracks for this to be interesting)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I don't think it takes a computer to make than connection.....
Buses stop at a bus station
Trains stop at a train station
On my desk there's a workstation....
The #1 unsuggestion for "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information" (a great book) is "The Devil Wears Prada", which I thought was pretty good. Just because not many people are likely to own both doesn't mean you can expect an active dislike the way you would between, say, an Ann Coulter book and a Michael Moore book.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
huh...i guess amazon would not be moving to this any time soon ;-)
btw, not that great: i typed in lord of the rings, and it came back with this load of books by mary higgins clark..another one of my fav authors...
but get this: number 50 on the list was.........The hobbit!!
hehe...someone messed with the unsuggesters head..../me thinks the frost posters got to it...another one bites the dust!! long live the slashdot troll coalition!
i will go now...
Sigura Non Grata
...though this might be the result of too small a dataset. Every book I put in resulted in an "unsuggestion" list with at least one book I also liked, or, in some cases, books I knew someone who also liked my main suggestion liked. It seems it's a lot easier to find similarities than unsimilarities, because it's easy to guess that people who like 'A' will like 'A1', 'A2' and 'A3', but it does not follow that they WON'T like 'B'. Why, for example, would I not like Harry Potter because I like Ringworld? Why would my wife be unable to enjoy both science fiction and chick-lit? And why does like Raymond Feist's fantasy mean I'm uninterested in books on programming?
People are complex, and only a few truly pathetic souls have their interests defined so narrowly that it's safe to guess what they don't like based on what they do.
The danger of Website.com recommends-type systems has always been the potential for the formation of subcultural ghettos, where everyone sticks in the "safe zones" of recommended material. To date, it never seems to have materialised, but Internet shopping still isn't mainstream enough for it to really be likely.
Being able to identify a "danger zones" could just give the user the courage to step out of the safe zone into the unknown.
It's analogous to the guide-book industry. Not so long ago, travel guides tended to be a checklist of what to see and what to do; nowadays, they tend to list what you could do, but while they tell you what you shouldn't do, they rarely attempt to tell you what you should.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Goatse - The Photodocumentary
I think I may have discovered a new author to try...
On a whim, I tried searching for some of the most unreadably boring books possible - The business motivational/strategy genre.
Unsurprisingly, I kept seeing top-10 opposites that I really enjoy... A lot of Gaiman, some Prachett, even Robert Graves (From which I might hypothesize that the business world somehow forms the antithesis of our collective mythic tradions). But I also saw someone named Haruki Murakami consistantly appearing in the #1 or #2 slot.
Guess I'll have to give him a shot, although checking out a few synopses of his more popular works, I don't see why he would fall in among the afforementioned opposites.
I typed in about 20 books that I own and that I thought could give interesting results, and the answer was invariably "Sorry. A book must be owned by at least 75 members to have unrecommendations."
AccountKiller
UnSuggestions for Bible by
14 members (82,182 more popular); average rating 3 stars. Members with the book have have a total of 12,374 books in their libraries (see good suggestions).
Sorry. A book must be owned by at least 75 members to have unrecommendations.
Hmm... I guess people have switched to coran.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
I tried your suggestion. Doesn't work.
Typed in "Wuthering Heights" (bastards made me read that in school)
and the results are, "ANSI Common Lisp", "The justification of God : an exegetical and theological study of Romans"
will become familiar with "goatse." Don't say I didn't warn you!
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
While good for a gag gift, I don't think this is useful for broadening horizons... way too painful.
Here's a better idea:
Given the books I've liked, and the books I've disliked, find me a book that my profile tells you the least (widest confidence interval on expected rating) about whether I'd like it or not.
This would have the effect of encouraging genre hopping, and encouraging the reading of fairly evenly split love it or hate it books, which are often interesting at least in concept. Sounds a lot better than reading 10 books on topic X.
I might even want to see some of this behavior weighted into the normal recommendation system, and if you do want to keep the old recommendations around change their listing heading to "Similar books" rather than "Recommended".
It doesn't work. I have proof
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
A colleague points out that current sport among search mavens is to find the "the
perfectly evil book which causes the Unsuggester to generate a great library. The best try so far was "Who Moved My Cheese? For Kids", but not enough people own it."
The very fact that there is a WMMC for kids gives me greater despair then knowing GWB will be President for two more years.
Although the WMMC regular ed. unsuggestions are pretty good, good enough to keep my book club busy for a few years:
http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester/12799
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Pretty much every book I enter I get 'unsuggested' a book that I've both read and enjoyed!
Alan Moore's 'Watchmen' gives me Brian McLaren's works, which I love.
Brian McLaren's 'The Last Word and the Word After That' gives me 'Good Omens', by Pratchett and Gaiman, which I've read more times than I can remember.
'Small Gods', by Pratchett gives me 'The Jesus I Never Knew', by Yancey. Again, an excellent, profound book.
And then Yancey's work, in turn, leads me to Douglas Adams, who needs no defense!
What's the message here? That I'm unique in being intrigued both postmodern explorations of faith as well as surreal British fantasy works? Surely there must be others like me out there? Or is there really such a great literary secular/sacred divide that readers on either side dare not cross?
Don't hate the book, hate the app!
Perhaps opinions are more sharply divided when the books in question are fairly similar. Have you noticed that the fiercest arguments are between experts and over fine shades of meaning? Or between people who are lovers, or in the same family? It seems the more two people generally agree, the sharper are their disagreements over any remaining differences.
So I would not be surprised if people who generally like fantasy and sf are quite sharply divided over whether Tolkien or Pratchett is better. But show them a book by Martha Stewart on home decorating and their reaction will be pretty mild, either way, since it doesn't fall in their area of passion.
If so, this makes the tool much less useful, because it's based on the assumption that a person's taste in books smoothly and gradually changes from books he mosts likes to books he least likes. Probably real people don't have such smooth continuum of taste, it's probably much more jaggedy and chaotic.
You mean, like a site where people can get together and complain about how stupid, criminal and/or deluded everyone else is (including some of the other people on the site itself)? Sounds oddly familiar...
What's wrong with cultural ghettos? I mean, from the point of view of an iconoclast not typically living in one? I say they're a great way to avoid people I don't want to meet.
I mean, I like the idea that if, say, I go traveling in Normandy then everyone with a fairly shallow understanding of French history gleaned from a Let's Go guide will be standing in line to see Mt. San Michel, leaving the more subtle bits of the countryside relatively empty for me. And if I go to San Francisco, all the tourists will be choking the Haight or lining up to drive down Lombard Street, not taking up parking spots where I want to go.
There was one day when I tried to make the convenience store clerk's head explode by buying pocketbook editions of Kama Sutra and Tolkien's Unfinished Tales on the same day...
Thanks to Slashdot for reminding me of this site. I heard about this site last month and wanted to join even before I visited it, just never got around =) And now that it was mentioned in Slashdot, it hold up for a while and then I just got an error message. Now I have half of the contents of my bookshelves stacked next to my computer and no way to enter this stuff. Hmm, wonder how this upload thing works... *fires up OpenOffice.org*
Well, we've Slashdotted the site but I found the same thing. For every book I tried, I found several un-suggestions that I have read and enjoyed. The oddest unsuggestion pair:
"Is Sex Necessary?" by Thurbur and White . . . and . . . "Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstien.
One's a cute (and rather innocent) parody of self-help books of the 1920s with funny little essays and doodly illustrations, the other is a book of irreverent poetry (ostensibly) for children with cute illustrations.
I am not a crackpot.
Liked the first result, but more significantly, an obvious flaw is brought out by that result. Note the harry potter box set lists high. Of course it would, if you own the book independently, you wouldn't buy the box set and vice-versa. To say Harry potter fans don't like Harry Potter books is rather stupid.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I entered 'Madame Bovary' and the books it suggested I should not read include
Practical Common LISP, ANSI Common LISP, Recovering biblical manhood and Nine marks of a healthy church for example
I like recommendz.com cause it allows me to find movies I'll hate, which is a lot more
important (as a safety precaution) than bothing with questions with if the movie is 9 out of ten,
or just 88 out of ten.
Actually, as long as a book is by a small publisher, even if it is very popular, the Book Fair usually won't have it; I guess since they sort by publisher, they don't bother ordering from publishers they don't have a shelf for. For example, consider the Dalkey Archive Press: their translation of the French novel Television, for example, was very well-received, had a very positive write-up in the New York Times, and is available in most libraries and bookstores, but I don't think the Book Fair has every had a single copy. I'm also fond of the small sci-fi publisher Nightshade Books, but you can't find any of their books there either. Frankly, the only reason to go to the Book Fair is the bargain books section which makes up for the other annoyances.
I happen to like ANSI Commond LISP and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women!!
It assumes that if you like Sci-Fi, you must be a geek and won't like things related to Christianity or Literature (and vice-versa).
They either have sucky algorithms or people have narrower tastes than I expected. I hope it's the former...
... So you are on track to NotLike:
Operation Iron Fist
Operation Kabda Bil Hadid
October 1, 2005 - October 6, 2005
On October 1, 2005 a force consisting of approximately 1,000 Marines, Soldiers and Sailors from Regimental Combat Team-2 launched Operation Iron Fist, or Kabda Bil Hadid in Arabic. The goal of the operation was to disrupt the insurgent activity based out of Sadah, a town in the al Anbar province located 12 km from the Syrian border. The Iron Fist offensive is part of Operation Hunter, a larger operation to deny insurgents the ability to operate out of the Euphrates River Valley.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Better check Leviticus. Lots of neat Sacrifices (cue Elton John) there.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I put in 1984 and it came up with The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy by Douglas Adams and The lord of the rings by J.R.R. Tolkien... but then again it did return Little Women by Louisa May Alcott...
Let's type in Oprah's book list to find some books worth reading.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Sure pick two books on my shelf... Well ok I think I gave Ella Enchanted to a kid, but I did read the whole thing, and I've also got Orientalism on my shelf... although I've only ready parts of it.
I want to be able to calculate the degrees of unsuggestion that are on my bookself... that's what I want!
...where's the slownewsday tag?
This thing is great. I put in Programming Python and the list came back with a bunch of books that my girlfriend loves. It worked the same for every book title we tried.
Your ad here.
Librarything is wonderful. The Unsuggester is cool in a geeky way, but way down on the list of impressive features. There's some more info about how the Suggester and Unsuggester work in this post on the LibraryThing Blog.
;)
A lot of the really good features only become apparent once you've created an account (best online account creation ever) and added some books. You can add 200 for free, and adding them is easy - go on, give it a try. For a start, you can get suggestions that take your entire library into account.
They're also having a very active dialogue with people in the library science field, and employ an actual real-life librarian.
I was not paid to say any of this! I'm just a very satisfied paid up member of the site since shortly after it appeared.
..and I'll form the head!!
Try this: :P
http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester/920
For some reason the bible doesn't feature
"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google"
"My Life" by Bill Clinton returns "Don't Waste Your Life" by John Piper... maybe someone should mail a copy to ex-Pres. Bill!
I typed in the name of this book I'm reading currently, "White Mughals", and found DNA's H2G2 on the list, in addition to other sci-fi works like Dune, and surprisingly enough, Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream.
I suppose I'm a statistical anomaly, in that I'm interested in medieval Indian history, modernist English literature and in contemporary science-fiction, but I've read, and loved, all books mentioned (or wanted to read "Dune"; have read the rest).
More than mere navel gazing.
There is something odd about the The Harry Potter boxed set by J.K. Rowling, it seems to come up a lot in my trials as a book I wouldn't want to read. (Ignoring the fact that I've read to pretty much enjoyed all the books so far)
It came up under searches for:
* The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold.
* Kim by Rudyard Kipling
* Startide rising by David Brin
* The voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis
* Harry Potter and the sorcerer's stone by J.K. Rowling
The first three I could see where there might not be huge overlap with the Harry Potter audience, but I would have expected more overlap with the fourth, and the fifth by definition overlaps. Odd.
Ignoring that oddity, the unsuggestions that were most obviously wrong for me were the ones for Castles of steel : Britain, Germany, and the winning of the Great War at sea by Robert K. Massie.
It unsuggested:
16. Little house on the prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
42. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
62. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
73. Good omens : the nice and accurate prophecies of Agnes Nutter, witch : a novel by Neil Gaiman
All of which I've enjoyed, especially the last.