The Algorithm Pleases Me

On September 15, Goodreads debuted their Recommendations feature – something new for me to play with, to expand my engagement with the site beyond list-making and obsessive-compulsive self monitoring of the number of pages of a book read per day.Goodreads announced the acquisition of a company called Discovereads.com last March, which they purchased to acquire Discovereads’ book recommendation algorithm, and spent the past few months integrating the algorithm into their database of “100 million book ratings from 4.6 million users.”  The quality of the book algorithm, Goodreads explained on their blog, will be the difference between the kind of recommendations Amazon gives and “good” recommendations.

So, should Goodreads have buyer’s remorse?  Nope.  I’ve put in some work, but not a ton, to make their Recommendations system work well for me (I rate many of the books I read and maintain a huge “to read” list but I don’t categorize books by shelves as the site suggests for improved recommendation) and the books their algorithm pointed me to are tops.  The authors they suggest are often unrepresented in any of my lists and the books seem interesting to me.  I’ve added five or six books to my “to read” list – and added them easily, by clicking on a little button that says “want to read.”  Also options: add a book you’ve already read to your shelves by giving it a starred rating or removing it from your recommendation by clicking on the “Not interested” link below each book, while simultaneously improving your recommendations.

The Algorithm (which I have begun mentally singing to, “hello algorithm, my old friend” to the tune of “Sounds of Silence” because I have a sense of humor about living online the way SeanParkerJustinTimberlake said I do) gives recommendations based on two of your main lists, “to read” and “currently reading,” and breaks down most of the recommendations by genre.  At first, the genre recommendations auto-populate with the genres The Algorithm thinks you will like most, but you can adjust the categories of recommendation by clicking on a small question mark next to “Recommendations by genre” and selecting all of the genre categories you are interested in.  I particularly like the “Fiction” and “Non-fiction” categories because, with the recommendations still refined by my current shelves and ratings, they create a list of different kinds of things that I like.

My only qualm with the system is that there is no way to quickly add a book to the “read” shelf without rating it.