(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

This site: http://www.librarything.com/unsuggester is quite fun. It tries to guess what books you are unlikely to own, based on one volume in your collection.

It is, however, a bit buggy - or rather, it suggests rather odd tastes among its audience. I suppose I can believe that not many people who own Cold Comfort Farm go in for evangelical 'inspirational reading', though arguably Amos is funnier if you know a bit about low church sterotypes. But while, again, it's highly unlikely that a fan of The Nine Tailors would give house room to the unspeakable Left Behind series, I do find it a tiny bit implausible that there are no Sayers fans other than me who like Harry Potter. (In fact, I know it's not true!)

But that could be a function of the people using Library Thing. On the other hand, I can't see any plausible reason why people who own the Lord of the Rings should be considered vanishingly unlikely to own The Hobbit....

Comments

[eagles-rock.livejournal.com]

Quite fascinating once you get into it - Barchester Towers unsuggests Stephen King (fair enough!), Janet Evanovitch, Harry Potter and Books about the Bible. I boggled at this, until I read some of the blurb about one of these books and realised that Trollope would have eviscerated it.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenanace unsuggests historical romance, and Books about the Bible. OK, I'm on my first hist. romance in 20 years. Appears therefore to be compatible with knitting and vampires.

Grapes of Wrath unsuggests Star Wars, Knitting, Vampires, and Books about the Bible. Not too bad, as it happens.

The Bible (KJV; well, I have read chunks of it, if not books about it) unsuggests modern rubbish (read and unread), Terry Pratchett, 'Tales of the City' and anti-consumerist works. Seems basically anti-1990's and suggests a rather polarised buying community.

[tree_and_leaf]

The prevelance of the Books about the Bible as unsuggestions for almost anything I put in, other than Lewis, certainly suggests that there are a lot of fundies out there who don't read anything outside their own particular ghetto. Personally, I see nothing contradictory about reading the Bible and Pratchett.

I stuck in 'Witch Wood', in the hope that it would UnRecommend Calvin's Institutes, but alas it doesn't have enough readers to produce unrecommendations, though it did spit out a Member Review, which described it as about a pastor trying to protect his Protestant congregation against witchcraft, which is - almost sort of true, except it's really about how religious extremism, especially of the perverted Calvinist variety, corrupts.