Literature maps

[tree_and_leaf]

I have found a new toy! The literature map (based on an experiment called http://www.gnod.net/ ) asks you to enter an author, and then tells you what other books readers of X are likely to read (it appears to be run by a German and to incorporate German data).

I can't, having taken a quick look round the site, find out where he's got his data from, but it's fun nonetheless. I tried it with Hermann Kant, because it was one of the first hits on Kant (there's not a lot of stuff about him on the web, and most of what there is is just lifted from German wikipedia), and am torn between being baffled and half-convinced. The closeness of Kleist says 'German undergraduate reading list' to me, but I'm intrigued by the presence of Raymond Chandler (who Kant riffs on at various points in Die Aula and Terry Pratchett. Which I wouldn't have thought... but then I do read rather a lot of Pratchett, and I suppose there's a certain amount of similarity, even though Pratchett writes fantasy and Kant doesn't...

The Terry Pratchett one's quite interesting, too (and seems quite plausible).

Find it hard to believe that Tolkien fans are more likely to read Tom Clancy than CS Lewis, though, and am inclined to think something is skewing the sample (possibly this is it being a German site - Lewis is still quite obscure in Germany. All the same, Tom Clancy?)

ETA: found how it works. There's an interface where you stick in three favourite authors. Then it suggests names other people who like some of yours have liked, and you rate them as 'like' 'dislike' 'haven't read'. Not v. scientific, but a perilously addictive way of wasting time....

Comments

[mk-tortie.livejournal.com]

I find the author names hovering at the edges slightly creepy... they look like they're about to pounce!

Tom Clancy seems to be incredibly popular in Germany. Maybe he just turns up on every map?

[tree_and_leaf]

Could be. Like the baffling and extreme popularity of Follett and Die Säulen der Erde in Germany, which I have never worked out (maybe he reads better in German?).

[caulkhead.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it's like the Bruce Willis thing - maybe he has such a good translator that everyone thinks he is a fantastic writer?

Though surely there's only *so* much one can do with a source text.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

Who's Joan D. Vinge? She seems to be hovering next to Cherryh, though that may just be an artefact of the sampling method.

[tree_and_leaf]

No idea...

[straussmonster.livejournal.com]

You've never read The Snow Queen? For shame!

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Sayers got me lots of people I've never heard of and someone called "Janette Winterton". Hmm... Looks mightily untrustworthy to me. Wouldn't LibraryThing provide more accurate statistics? (not that I've got round to that yet).

[tree_and_leaf]

By dint of poking about, I discovered it works by asking readers to input three authors they like, and then asking them what they think of various other ones who are close to them in the data other people have put in. But that's not very statistically reliable. It also relies on users (a) being able to spell and (b) users spelling authors the same way, hence there seem to be individual entries for C.S. Lewis, CS Lewis, Dorothy L Sayers, DL Sayers, and probably Dorothy Sayers as well....

Still, I found it fun to play with *g*

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

Brent Dyer and Brent-Dyer have separate entries.

I'm pleased to see that lots of Heyer readers also enjoy Antonia Forest, though!

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nice little toy. :)
Tom Clancy is mostly popular because of the video games. I only found out that there are books about a month ago.

And Die Säulen der Erde is a great read in German. I haven't read it in English though, I can't compare. But I did read it three or four times in German.

[tree_and_leaf]

... there are video games? Makes sense, I suppose. Mind you, the only Clancy I've ever really been exposed to is the film The Hunt for Red October, which is pretty good in an undemanding tense-action-film way. Of course, a lot of that's down to Sean Connery ;)

[wuglet.livejournal.com]

Oh, I really love that film! More or less because of Sean Connery as well. :)

And up to a year or so ago I didn't know it was a Clancy, either.
I mainly know the video games, like Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X., Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon, Tom Clancy's EndWar. There are a lot more of them...

[azdak.livejournal.com]

I find it rather amusing that the only women authors on the Pratchett map are J.K.Rowling and - Jane Austen!

Perhaps JA crops up on every single map?

[thecatsamuel.livejournal.com]

aarggh not another new way to put off writing this essay... so many authors to play with. JA does come up an awful lot but Tacitus doesn't seem loved.