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!"

Comments

"Books you don't need in a place you can't find"

[dpbsmith]

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?