The Vintage Reader

Via Lifehacker: LibraryThing's UnSuggester lets you enter a book you DIDN'T like, and it will suggest some books that you might like, based on that. For example, I recently tried to read The Cove, by Catherine Coulter, on a recommendation by a relative. I didn't even make it through the first chapter before the introduction of a wise older woman who calls the heroine "Child" every time she speaks to her, which is pretty much a deal killer for me. Catherine Coulter has been around for a long time and I've never read anything of hers (mostly because she used to just write Big Thick Romances, and the most recently published Big Thick Romance I've read is Love's Tender Fury), but a friend who shares my enjoyment of Herman Wouk had also recommended this series (I think she compared it to The X-Files) so I gave it a try. But it just wasn't to my taste, so into the UnSuggester it went, and came out with these results.

Whadya know? I did like Mrs. Dalloway, the first UnSuggestion. I haven't read numbers 2 or 3, but I loved White Noise, the 4th suggestion. I don't really understand how Getting Things Done (#14) got on the list, but okay, I like it too. And White Teeth, by Zadie Smith (#17), is one of my favorite books of the last 10 years. There's a LOT of Neil Gaiman on the list, and I do always like Neil Gaiman.

By and large, though, I'm not sure this is all that useful for me. For one thing, I rarely finish books I don't like, unless I don't like them because of something like a horrible but well-written character (I remember one by Clyde Edgerton--Raney, I think--that had a main character I totally hated, but I couldn't quit reading). For another thing, I'm much more likely to want to read more of something I like than less of something I don't. But it's interesting, anyway.

EDIT: I completely forgot to mention that the UnSuggester is the companion to the LibraryThing Suggester, which makes recommendations based on books you did like.