Who Writes These Algorithms?

[the_other_sandy]

Goodreads seems to have lulled me into a false sense of security. Every time I read a Nightrunner book by Lynn Flewelling, it recommends some gay paranormal romance books to me, and so far it's really had my number. I've enjoyed several of those books, to the tune of completing 136% of my annual reading challenge on Goodreads.

But now Goodreads is making recommendations to me based on my reading Monty Python's Flying Circus: Complete and Annotated. Said recommendations include: The One That Got Away: My SAS Mission Behind Enemy Lines, Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance, Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival, Betty Crocker's New Cookbook, Memories of Anne Frank: Reflections of a Girlhood Friend, and Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It.

I want to see the algorithm that can correctly predict a person's taste in gay paranormal romance but can't recommend humor books to Monty Python readers.

Comments

[bookwurm.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to wrap my brain around this. Maybe not many people read and enjoyed Monty Python's Flying Circus: Complete and Annotated on Goodreads, so it's having trouble finding common liked titles to recommend? Maybe the people who read and enjoyed MPFC:CA have extremely eclectic/divergent tastes? Oddly, the biohazard book sounds familiar; I'm trying to remember if M had it on her wishlist.

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

You may be on to something. According to Goodreads, Monty Python's Flying Circus: Complete and Annotated has only been rated 73 times (which completely shocked me, because Monty Python), while Luck in the Shadows (the first Nightrunner book) has been rated 10,680 times and The Magpie Lord has been rated 3,206 times.

I wish enjoyment had something to do with the recommendations, though. Every now and again, Goodreads does the 'because you read Book X, here are more books like it' thing, and I want to point out that I gave Book X one star and don't want to read other books in that series, or by that author, or are similar in any way.

[bit-boy.livejournal.com]

I expect that you probably have it on your second guess. Something along the lines of: "Find all other books read by people that read X, then sort by rating".

And if the Biohazard book is on M's wishlist, she needs to update her wishlist. The book is currently in our library (I know, I just walked out of the mancave to check).