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Goodreads Is Broken

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Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#191

Post by akudha »

jpindar wrote: post #72
akudha wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worth a try, but where does one get all the book cover images, ISBN etc in bulk? I remember someone making open source version of IMDB (can't remember the link now), I think I saw it on Patreon. Would be nice to make something similar for books. One feature I'd love as a user (specifically for non-fiction books) - given a book, show me all books referenced in that book (in the chapter, footnotes etc). I've foun…

Calibre can download metadata and covers from a number of sources, mine lists: Amazon, Big Book Search, Edelweiss, Google, Google Images, OZON.ru, Open Library, and Overdrive. Of course I'm only searching for one book at a time.

but can you use these covers though, especially if you have ads on your site etc? aren't those images Amazon's property?

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#192

Post by elorant »

lsc wrote: post #189
qrv3w wrote: post #77

> The recommendations suck, the lists suck — it’s like, 100 lists telling me to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter. I had the same experience with GR and also Amazon.com which constantly peddles the vampire romance books when I am looking for recommendations for horror/fantasy. Both Amazon and GR strategy make sense because best-selling books sell the best, so they should recommend them to increase profits. Ho…

As far as I can tell, all recommendations lists fail compared to freely-available experts. Like, if you like literary fiction, go through the Pulitzer prize for fiction, and just read. (I'm not even half way through that list, but everything I've read on it has been really, really good.) - there's all sorts of awards for smaller niches... the nebula, the Hugo, etc... (Actually, that's a question. What is the award fo…

Because we don't always like awarded books. I read "The Three Body Problem" a couple of years ago which had won a Nebula award and found it to be mediocre at best and much overhyped. Last year I read the "Neuromancer" which had won both a Nebula and a Hugo and was for me one of the worst SF books I've ever read. And then there are books which are brilliant, but have never won an award, like "The Martian".

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#193

Post by hinkley »

inapis wrote: post #94
qrv3w wrote: post #77

> The recommendations suck, the lists suck — it’s like, 100 lists telling me to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter. I had the same experience with GR and also Amazon.com which constantly peddles the vampire romance books when I am looking for recommendations for horror/fantasy. Both Amazon and GR strategy make sense because best-selling books sell the best, so they should recommend them to increase profits. Ho…

I face this problem with Netflix, Spotify and Youtube too. These algorithmic recommendations just need one improper dataset to throw everything out of the window. For weeks, my spotify is overloaded with instrumental songs. Youtube keeps on repeating the same stuff. Netflix believes that the only thing I watch is science fiction. I'm dying for human curation.

Why for the love of god and your own mothers would they suggest movies to me that are similar to a movie I watched 5 minutes of and never finished?

If I can't make it through 5 minutes of a movie I sure as fuck don't want to watch another movie that's just like it. Read the room already.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#194

Post by jillesvangurp »

qrv3w wrote: post #77

> The recommendations suck, the lists suck — it’s like, 100 lists telling me to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter. I had the same experience with GR and also Amazon.com which constantly peddles the vampire romance books when I am looking for recommendations for horror/fantasy. Both Amazon and GR strategy make sense because best-selling books sell the best, so they should recommend them to increase profits. Ho…

I'm really liking the recommendations on your website. I found a few good recommendations already. And like you I really struggle with finding those via the usual channels. But, that font is just awful .... :-). You do have a bit of a Harry Potter infestation on your best fiction list. It appears multiple times there. Same with game of thrones related stuff.

Out of curiousity, where do you source your data from?

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#195

Post by sohkamyung »

lsc wrote: post #189
qrv3w wrote: post #77

> The recommendations suck, the lists suck — it’s like, 100 lists telling me to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter. I had the same experience with GR and also Amazon.com which constantly peddles the vampire romance books when I am looking for recommendations for horror/fantasy. Both Amazon and GR strategy make sense because best-selling books sell the best, so they should recommend them to increase profits. Ho…

As far as I can tell, all recommendations lists fail compared to freely-available experts. Like, if you like literary fiction, go through the Pulitzer prize for fiction, and just read. (I'm not even half way through that list, but everything I've read on it has been really, really good.) - there's all sorts of awards for smaller niches... the nebula, the Hugo, etc... (Actually, that's a question. What is the award fo…

My preference is to rely on the judgement of reviewers whose taste kind of matches mine.

I'm into SF and Fantasy. In the past, I would read the reviews featured in Locus magazine by the various reviewers. Nowadays, I occasionally read Locus but also reviews from other places like torcom, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Interzone magazine.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#196

Post by NeedMoreTea »

JHer wrote: post #171
qrv3w wrote: post #77

> The recommendations suck, the lists suck — it’s like, 100 lists telling me to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter. I had the same experience with GR and also Amazon.com which constantly peddles the vampire romance books when I am looking for recommendations for horror/fantasy. Both Amazon and GR strategy make sense because best-selling books sell the best, so they should recommend them to increase profits. Ho…

Entering "1984" yields "books similar to 1984 by Michael Dean". Entering "Nineteen Eighty-Four" gives me "Book picks similar to Nineteen Eighty-Four by Matthew Dunster". When I search for "Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel", the site responds with "Book picks similar to Beer in the Snooker Club by Waguih Ghali". I'm sure Dean, Dunster, and Ghali are terrific writers but what happened to George Orwell?

"1984 orwell" finds it. Just "1984" looks like it's finding a translation or something - the cover picture clearly shows George Orwell. Maybe Dean is the translator? Still a bit odd.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#197

Post by jillesvangurp »

inapis wrote: post #94
qrv3w wrote: post #77

> The recommendations suck, the lists suck — it’s like, 100 lists telling me to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter. I had the same experience with GR and also Amazon.com which constantly peddles the vampire romance books when I am looking for recommendations for horror/fantasy. Both Amazon and GR strategy make sense because best-selling books sell the best, so they should recommend them to increase profits. Ho…

I face this problem with Netflix, Spotify and Youtube too. These algorithmic recommendations just need one improper dataset to throw everything out of the window. For weeks, my spotify is overloaded with instrumental songs. Youtube keeps on repeating the same stuff. Netflix believes that the only thing I watch is science fiction. I'm dying for human curation.

Spotify has one genious feature that I use a lot: similar artists. The problem with machine learning and recommendations is that it has a few pitfalls that lead to poor results. This is on full display on Amazon which manages to recommend stuff I've already bought from them while not being able to tell the difference between hard science fiction and fantasy. The resulting recommendation bubble seems impossible to escape.

With Spotify, they do have a few features that work for me. I've discovered new artists by exploring their "Fans Also Like" feature. The nice thing about this is that they don't try to be too smart there.

Their normal recommendations suffer from the same issues that other sites have and are thrown off by the fact that my tastes are all over the place. I happily listen to sixties psychedelic rock, jazz, metal and some techno or some punk and tend to go from one to the other. Yet I'm very picky about what I listen to. Somewhere along the lines it seems to have decided I'm a middle aged guy (correct) and it consistently does not recommend me any music made this century; which is kind of frustrating if you are trying to find something new to listen to. Recommendation bubbles are a thing and escaping from them is hard.

I work around it by using the fans also like feature and using it's suggested additions to playlists. This works surprisingly well. Example based similarity search is a much simpler problem then recommendations. And it's IMHO a much more interesting feature to explore content with.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#198

Post by ses1984 »

elorant wrote: post #192
lsc wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, all recommendations lists fail compared to freely-available experts. Like, if you like literary fiction, go through the Pulitzer prize for fiction, and just read. (I'm not even half way through that list, but everything I've read on it has been really, really good.) - there's all sorts of awards for smaller niches... the nebula, the Hugo, etc... (Actually, that's a question. What is the award fo…

Because we don't always like awarded books. I read "The Three Body Problem" a couple of years ago which had won a Nebula award and found it to be mediocre at best and much overhyped. Last year I read the "Neuromancer" which had won both a Nebula and a Hugo and was for me one of the worst SF books I've ever read. And then there are books which are brilliant, but have never won an award, like "The Martian".

You didn't like neuromancer...?

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#199

Post by umvi »

sohkamyung wrote: post #195
lsc wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, all recommendations lists fail compared to freely-available experts. Like, if you like literary fiction, go through the Pulitzer prize for fiction, and just read. (I'm not even half way through that list, but everything I've read on it has been really, really good.) - there's all sorts of awards for smaller niches... the nebula, the Hugo, etc... (Actually, that's a question. What is the award fo…

My preference is to rely on the judgement of reviewers whose taste kind of matches mine. I'm into SF and Fantasy. In the past, I would read the reviews featured in Locus magazine by the various reviewers. Nowadays, I occasionally read Locus but also reviews from other places like tor com, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Interzone magazine.

> My preference is to rely on the judgement of reviewers whose taste kind of matches mine.

I wish there were a website where I could put in all of my favorite video games, books, movies, anime, etc. And it would recommend me things based on what people with similar tastes liked. Then, I could try out the recommendation and then either like or dislike it.

I would slowly acquire a recommendation network of people like me, effectively crowd sourcing the content-finding to a bunch of clones!

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#200

Post by lsc »

elorant wrote: post #192
lsc wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, all recommendations lists fail compared to freely-available experts. Like, if you like literary fiction, go through the Pulitzer prize for fiction, and just read. (I'm not even half way through that list, but everything I've read on it has been really, really good.) - there's all sorts of awards for smaller niches... the nebula, the Hugo, etc... (Actually, that's a question. What is the award fo…

Because we don't always like awarded books. I read "The Three Body Problem" a couple of years ago which had won a Nebula award and found it to be mediocre at best and much overhyped. Last year I read the "Neuromancer" which had won both a Nebula and a Hugo and was for me one of the worst SF books I've ever read. And then there are books which are brilliant, but have never won an award, like "The Martian".

If you don't like William Gibson... you and I have very different tastes; Neuromancer is a particularly perfect example of the sort of thing I like.

There is a certain amount of calibrating for the awards group; for my taste? the nebula is... not 100%; much like how I enjoy '80s action films rather more than Ebert. like I've never read a Pulitzer for fiction book that I didn't think was incredible, while some of the nebula books I've read were only pretty good. (I haven't read anything by Liu Cixin yet, but it sounds like my thing? I mean, it was hyped, to me at least, as genre sci-fi written from a very different cultural perspective, which is totally my thing.)

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