MASTER LIST: Book Recommendation Engines.

I find books through a variety of sources.

I keep an eye on new titles through Baker & Taylor's Booking Ahead and CATS Booking Ahead emails and by using the fancy Advanced Search function at Amazon.

I read lots of blogs, I get recommendations from friends and family and library patrons.

I pick up books that are mentioned in the acknowledgements of other books.

I pick up books because I like their cover art, and I pick up books because I am horrified-yet-fascinated by their cover art.

I pick up books because they've been blurbed by a trusted source. (But I avoid putting TOO much stock in blurbs.)

I pick up sequels and books by authors I've read and enjoyed.

When I'm feeling ridiculously nerdy, I search Novelist for specific topics and read a bunch of books along similar lines (hence lists like this).

I buy used and new and I check books out of the library, and I get quite a lot of unsolicited review copies in the mail.

Like I said: A VARIETY OF SOURCES.

What I DON'T use very often are Book Recommendation Engines. Not because I have anything against them, just because I tend to find them and play with them and then forget what they're called.

SO. LET'S MAKE A LIST.

I shall use Howl's Moving Castle and The Book Thief as my test subjects.

Your Next Read: "At YourNextRead we only feature books you have told us you have read, enjoyed and recommended for others to read. If you do not understand what you are meant to be looking for then YourNextRead is for you...!" 

For fans of Howl's Moving Castle, YNR recommends: Castle in the Air, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Fairest, The Lives of Christopher Chant, The House of Many Ways, and Dragon Slippers. 

For fans of The Book Thief, YNR recommends: The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, I Am the Messenger (twice!), To Kill a Mockingbird, Night, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (*shudder*).

What Should I Read Next?: "Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our huge database of real readers' favorite books to provide book recommendations and suggestions for what to read next."

For fans of Howl's Moving Castle, WSIRN? recommends: Ghosts I Have Been, I am Mordred, The Perilous Gard, Erec Rex, The Children of Green Knowe, I am Morgan le Faye, Rowan of Rin, Restoree. (As it's such a long list, I only listed the first eight... but as I scrolled down, it continued to get more and more bizarre, with recommendations like Sideways Arithmetic from Wayside School and Rooftop. ROOFTOP. To be fair, Sorcery & Cecelia was there, too.)

For fans of The Book Thief, WSIRN? recommends: Daughter of Venice, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, The Clothes on Their Backs, Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie, Guernica, Alone in Berlin, Midnighters #1, and An Acquaintance with Darkness. (Further down? ONE FISH TWO FISH RED FISH BLUE FISH. I don't even. Boy in the Striped Pajamas shows up, too: although my hatred will never abate for that book, it makes more sense as a pick than DR. SEUSS.)

Bookish: "Bookish is an all-in-one website that uses patent pending technology to provide a book-centric, contextual and personalized experience, all with the goal of helping readers find their next book. We serve smarter book recommendations, original book lists and articles, and author and book pages for classics and new favorites."

For fans of Howl's Moving Castle, Bookish recommends: Abhorsen, Calling on Dragons, Sleeper Code, Rose Daughter, and Spindle's End. (Sleeper Code?? Calling on Dragons is a good call, though.)

For fans of The Book Thief, Bookish recommends: Where Things Come Back, Skullduggery Island (?), and Mattoo, Let's Play! (????)

There's other content, too: both pages link up to an extensive list of the author's other books as well as user reviews; The Book Thief is also included on a list called YA FOR BOYS (<--sideeye) and has a section devoted to favorite quotes.

BookLamp: "Much like Pandora.com was created to provide a practical outlet for the Music Genome Project, we created BookLamp.org to allow readers and writers to use the tools that we’ve developed over the years. BookLamp is the public face and home of the Book Genome Project, so please check it out and let us know what you think."

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE IS NOT INDEXED. Which is, obviously, a travesty.

For fans of The House of Many Ways, BookLamp recommends: Stopping for a Spell, Earwig and the Witch, The Servants, Magyk, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Re: the Shirley Jackson, I don't even.

For fans of The Book Thief, BookLamp recommends: Speak Through the Wind, Faith, The Blind Contessa's New Machine, Amagansett, The Rosary Girls. As I haven't read ANY of those, I can't offer up any pithy wisdom.

Hunch: "Hunch’s ambitious mission is to build a ‘Taste Graph’ of the entire web, connecting every person on the web with their affinity for anything, from books to electronic gadgets to fashion or vacation spots. Hunch is at the forefront of combining algorithmic machine learning with user-curated content, with the goal of providing better recommendations for everyone."

HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE IS NOT INDEXED. See above for my opinion on that matter.

For fans of Diana Wynne Jones, Hunch recommends: A.A. Milne, Nicholas Christopher, William Golding, Markus Zusak, China Mieville, Philip Pullman, Susanna Clarke, Katharine Kerr, and Margaret Atwood. I especially approve of the inclusion of Mieville, and Zusak was a rather hilarious coincidence. (Either that or I'm just getting punchy. There are waaaaaay more of these websites than I thought.)

For fans of The Book Thief, Hunch recommends: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, A Thousand Splendid Suns, Water for Elephants, The Girl Who Played with Fire, Middlesex, The Shadow of the Wind, The Kite Runner, and The Hunger Games. So, mostly other Book Group Picks?

TasteKid: "TasteKid is a discovery engine that provides on spot, relevant, music, movies, TV shows, books, authors and games recommendations, based on one's existing preferences. The purpose of these recommendations is discovery and taste exploration. Sometimes, less known items are recommended instead of more similar, yet much more popular ones, in order to increase the chances of discovering something new."

For fans of Howl's Moving Castle, TK recommends: House of Many Ways, Castle in the Air, Terrier, Lirael, Abhorsen, The Princess Bride, Stardust, Through the Looking Glass, Harry Potter, Fruits Basket, and a few others.

For fans of The Book Thief, TK recommends: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Messenger, Fault in Our Stars, The Night Circus, Paper Towns, Shadow of the Wind, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Sophie's World, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, I Capture the Castle, and a few others.

Bookseer: While it has a great look, this one just uses Amazon's top recommendations, so I'll just list the first of each list.

For fans of Howl's Moving Castle, Bookseer recommends: Castle in the Air.

For fans of The Book Thief, Bookseer recommends: Divergent. AHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Non-title-based recommendations:

Gnooks: "Gnooks is a self-adapting community system based on the gnod engine. Discover new writers you will like, travel the map. of literature and discuss your favorite books and authors." This one is by author, not title, and so while it's not particularly helpful in this case, it's still WICKED COOL.

For fans of Diana Wynne Jones, Gnooks points us to: Patricia C. Wrede, Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, Tamora Pierce, Bruce Coville, Gerald Morris, AND MANY MORE.

For fans of Markus Zusak, Gnooks points us to: Hugh Laurie (<--based on his ONE book, I guess?), Carlos Ruiz Zafron, Jonathan Stroud and David Levithan.

Which Book: "If you're not good at remembering book titles, or if you are the sort of reader who likes to choose by browsing round a little and seeing what tempts you, whichbook is the perfect solution to help you find what you are looking for." This one uses sliders, so you can search for a sad-funny-disturbing-optimistic book, or a happy-serious-safe-bleak one, or anything in between. 

[EDITED TO ADD TWEET]

Hi @bkshelvesofdoom. You can search Whichbook by author & title too - then search similar. See Book Thief here http://t.co/47EkvsFSj4

— Whichbook (@whichbooktoread) July 25, 2013

Related, but no robo-recommendations:

BookLikes: "Discover great books by exploring blogs and let others discover best books thank [sic] to your book reviews. Writing reviews was never so easy, fast and engaging - connect your review with a single book or whole book series."

As far as I can tell, this site is just trying to be a mashup of Tumblr and GoodReads?

BookVibe: "BookVibe digs through your Twitter stream to show you books being discussed by your friends (the people you follow). We have bought a ton of books ourselves from our friends’ “book streams” and we hope that you will enjoy seeing what books your friends are talking about. We compile this for you on one handy page and send out a weekly email digest highlighting books from your book stream."

No robot recommendations here, either, though I signed up for it anyway because I'm a sucker.

And then, there are the personal reading databases that double as recommendation engines:

GoodReads: "Goodreads is the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Our mission is to help people find and share books they love." AND TO PROVIDE A SPACE FOR PEOPLE TO BRING THE DRAMZ AND GET INTO BIG NASTY (though entertaining) KERFUFFLES. ALSO, IT'S OWNED BY AMAZON.

The recommendation engine is vaguely based on user ratings rather than on the plug-in-a-title-get-a-recommendation model, and in my experience, provides bizarre results. Last time I checked, it was telling me I'd like nonfiction about punk rock. 

Not that I have anything against nonfiction about punk rock, but judging by the almost 1,500 books I've rated, you'd think that the computer would be able to tell that my reading tastes lie in a different direction.

Shelfari: "Shelfari introduces readers to our global community of book lovers and encourages them to share their literary inclinations and passions with peers, friends, and total strangers (for now). Shelfari is a gathering place for authors, aspiring authors, publishers, and readers, and has many tools and features to help these groups connect with each other in a fun and engaging way. Our mission is to enhance the experience of reading by connecting readers in meaningful conversations about the published word." ALSO OWNED BY AMAZON.

For fans of Howl's Moving Castle, Shelfari recommends: a bunch of other books by Diana Wynne Jones.

For fans of The Book Thief, Shelfari recommends: In My Hands, Milkweed, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Tunes for Bears to Dance to, Something Remains, Diary of a Young Girl, Tales from the Secret Annex, World War II, Never Let Me Go, Edelweiss Pirates: Operation Einstein.

LibraryThing: "LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth."

For fans of Howl's Moving Castle, LT recommends: Castle in the Air, The Pinhoe Egg, A Sudden Wild Magic, Sabriel, Sorcery and Cecelia, Spindle's End, So You Want to be a Wizard, Searching for Dragons, Rose Daughter, and A College of Magics.

For fans of The Book Thief, LT recommends: I am the Messenger, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The Thirteenth Tale, The Help, Water for Elephants, Behind the Bedroom Wall, Room, People of the Book, and A Thousand Splendid Suns. (That list seems to start out with related titles and then just devolve into Common Reading Group Picks.)

LibraryThing offers lists of BOTH LT recommendations AND user recommendations for both titles, which is a super feature: in both cases, the user recommendations seemed more accurate to me.

Not launched yet:

Valioo: "You shouldn't waste time or money with the wrong books. Life is too short for such mistakes. We are developing a quick, fun and easy way to rate your books and receive highly personalized recommendations."

WE'LL SEE.

Real-live people providing online readers' advisory:

[Recommended in the comments] The Seattle Public Library provides this service via their website. As I'm not a patron—the form asks for a library card number—I haven't tried it out, but the idea is definitely a cool one.

PHEW. What have I learned?

That while these various recommendation resources are certainly entertaining, and could definitely point readers in some INTERESTING directions, that none of these engines can really hold their own against a one-on-one with a reader's advisory expert. 

Duh, right?

Anyway, I'm sure there must be more: which ones did I miss? Also, do you use them, and if so, which one is your favorite?

Comments

[Julie]

There are some good suggestions in there (I agree about Calling on Dragons for fans of Howl's Moving Castle, etc.) but often it seems like they just come up with really obvious answers. The one I see the most is Goodreads and their sample recommendation lists are like "so and so read 3 books with a steampunk theme.... our recommendation is.... another steampunk book!" Thank you, GoodReads, I could probably have gotten there on my own. A lot of these seem to be the same way. "How about... another book by the same author!"

[Leila]

@Julie: Yes, exactly! I suspect that those of us who'd be likely to FIND and USE said websites already have a pretty good handle on how/where to find readalikes. Like I said, they're still fun to use, but none of them are MAGICALLY AWESOME.

I didn't touch on Novelist, though, because I wanted this list to be all free sources, but now I'm wondering how its automated recomendations would have lined up...

[LizB]

I cannot stand when the results include other books by the same author. I think that anyone looking for readers advisory has done some basics first, such as, oh -- looking for other books by the same author. Is there a handful of times when it MAY be helpful, for someone like Nora Roberts, when you want to stay away from the paranormal, say? Perhaps, but that is outside the typical situation.

[tanita]

I can NEVER use these sites because they make me want to throw things. They're either super obvious, or so, SO random. Shirley Jackson, indeed!!
I find that I attempt to use them more often for adult reads; I have a lot of word-of-mouth to go on for YA stuff - plus the ever looming potential Cybils list.

If you someday find one that works, shout it to the skies, willya?
And, thanks for all the work on this one.

[Annie]

Hi - that's a good list of course, but the point about Whichbook is that you can start with the reading experience you want from your next read, not a title or an author, which means you are likely to get something you've never heard of, but that offers the thrills you want. To give Whichbook a fair go, try analysing what you like about Howl's Moving Castle - what kind of read was it? Then put those values into the Whichbook site and see what you are offered.... it's much more intuitive and reader centred and its run by humans not bots.

[Leila]

@Annie: Yeah, that's what I meant by "This one uses sliders, so you can search for a sad-funny-disturbing-optimistic book, or a happy-serious-safe-bleak one, or anything in between."

But, yes. A) I didn't go into much depth, which was probably unfair to the website, and B) I should probably edit the list to re-categorize it so that it's not included with the other title-centric services.

I shall do that!

[Leila]

Er, wait. I just scanned through the list, and it IS already in the non-title-based section. SCORE. I was starting to feel like a failure for the oversight!

[Claire]

Even real-life readers' advisory librarians can be hit or miss, but I love that my library offers this personalized book recommendation service! Best part is that you don't need a library card, so anybody can use it, not just patrons in the system.

http://www.spl.org/using-the-library/get-help/your-next-5-books

[Claire]

Ugh, am on the desk and hopping between patrons so that came out weird and unintentionally argumentative - I mean "AS YOU KNOW ALREADY GOSH" about the vagaries of readers' advisory :).

[Wsirn]

Hi. Thanks for including WhatShouldIReadNext.com in your list! Sorry some of the results were a bit odd... Inevitably any algorithm will throw up a few curve balls at times, though the Dr Seuss one in particular doesn't make us look good. Part of our algorithm allows for what we call the 'Harry Potter Problem' - is so many readers like those books (or Hunger Games, or Twilight, etc etc) that they would be recommended to everyone if we didn't make allowances. But the 'Dr Seuss Problem' clearly represents an issue at the other end of the long tail. We are always keeping an eye on these things and looking at adjusting our algorithm to make things better. In fact, we have some possible tweaks we're trying out which would hammer this type of kink out more - if you'd be interested in looking at some test recommendations, we'd be delighted to have your input. Please let me know here and I can email you if so.

What we do do at least is automatically filter out books by the same author as it seems obvious that their books might be worth trying!

All the best; Andrew, WSIRN