Bad Suggestions

In an early post on this blog, I sang the praises of LibraryThing.  I’ve continued to use the site, and have been only increasingly pleased with the return on my twenty-five dollar investment in a lifetime unlimited membership.  A recent whimsical addition to the site is the UnSuggester.

With this new tool, you can look up a book and see which books are conspicuously absent from the shelves of LT users who own the book you are researching.  In other words, if you love The Mists of Avalon, you will not like Desiring God!  I’ve decided to put the UnSuggester to the test.  Results and commentary follow.  

First, a couple of books I read earlier this year, own, and have entered into LT (the six books whose unsuggestions are discussed are linked to their UnSuggester results – these results will change as LT’s database grows; discussion is based on unsuggestions returned on November 16, 2006):

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien - The top unsuggestions for O’Brien’s novel are filled with popular Christian books (e.g., The Purpose Driven Life, Wild at Heart, Blue Like Jazz), chicklit (e.g., many Shopaholic novels), and popfic – primarily by Stephen King.  I’ve read only two of the top twenty unsuggestions, and they come in at numbers nineteen and twenty.  One thing I note by looking further down the list is that a single person can dramatically modify the unsuggestions.  For example, I own Knowing God and Calvin’s Institutes.  These are the number thirty-one and fifty-nine unsuggestions respectively.  However, in both cases, I am the only LT user who also owns At Swim-Two-Birds.  If I did not own the books by Packer and Calvin, they would both be in the top ten unsuggestions for the O’Brien.  So, it appears that readers of postmodern Irish experimental litfic do not often crossover into chicklit, Stephen King, Christian self-help, and, bookpress excluded, theology.

Exegetical Fallacies by D. A. Carson – UnSuggestions for this work by Carson include a huge number of books by Terry Pratchett, who I believe is a fantasy author.  There is also a fair amount of litfic in the list.  Neither of these is unsurprising given that Carson’s work appears to be aimed at seminary students. 

Next, a couple of books I purchased but have not received or entered into LT:

 The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu - Many of the unsuggestions for Genji are works of Christian theology.  Among the ones that I own are Desiring God (unsuggestion number one), Grudem’s Systematic Theology (number three), and Tozer’s Pursuit of God (number five).  Knowing God, Don’t Waste Your Life, and Calvin’s Institutes are also in the top fifteen.  Chicklit and popfic are a couple of the other genres well represented in these unsuggestions.  Of course, many of these theological unsuggestions will sink when my copy of Genji arrives and is added to LT. 

Whose Bible is it? by Jaroslav Pelikan – A lot of fantasy and other fiction (including some cyberpunk and chicklit) returned as the unsuggestions here.  It does seem from the results here and above that fantasy readers steer clear of religious works, particularly Christian ones, and vice versa.

Finally, a couple of books I have read, but do not own and have therefore not entered into LT:

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers – The unsuggestions for this novel are almost exclusively works of Christian theology and Christian living.  They includes works by Sproul, Piper, Stott, Spurgeon, Vos, Bruce, MacArthur, Baxter, Schaeffer, and more.  My theory is that this novel, as one of the most popular on LT, is owned by so many people, that the unsuggestions are drawn from a somewhat isolated subgroup of libraries that share little in common with other LT users.  This, perhaps naturally, yields many seminarians (the top unsuggestions also include two greek new testaments; this seems to support my conclusion).

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs by John Foxe – Cyberpunk, fantasy, and chicklit.  All expected results given the results of the earlier books.

The UnSuggester is fun to play with, but the results become a bit predictable with time.  It will be interesting though to see the results change (or not) as LT continues to add users and books.  I promise to do my part to bring litfic and theology closer together!