[lacker]

Very interesting... some feedback.

So I search for "Proust", and the top 8 results are not Proust. Since Proust has one extremely famous book, I thought it would show up, rather than a bunch of different commentary on Proust.

So I finally find the page for In Search Of Lost Time. However, it says none of my friends have read it. Well, of course not - I don't have any Booqsi friends yet. So, there's just nothing I can do on this page.

Next I looked for The Power And The Glory. At least this page has a summary of the book. But, also none of my friends read it, and there's nothing I can do here.

Next, Consilience. Same thing. Basically I search for a book, I get maybe nothing, maybe a summary, and then there's nothing else I can do on that page.

So, I want to like this site, but I'm just finding nothing I can do here.

Personally, I love books but I hate Goodreads. I just don't care that a hundred thousand random people prefer The Twilight Saga Complete Collection to The Death of Ivan Ilych.

I would be really interested to read a well-written paragraph that said, hey, if you like Nabokov and Borges, then you might like this other author. That sort of recommendation is what I occasionally get from reading blogs or tweets from people with a similar literary taste to mine, and it's very useful, I find most books through some sort of recommendation.

Goodreads has this mistaken idea that I care about the average person's opinion of a book. A book is not a can opener. Everyone wants to open a can, everyone opens cans in the same way, everyone appreciates a can opener that successfully opens cans.

Anyway, I hope you do succeed in building a Goodreads alternative, because I would love to spend more time reading about books, reading good books, discussing books, and Goodreads is just not providing that experience.

[justinberding]

Thanks for the feedback! The book's info page doesn't have a lot going on, except to see some info about the book (or add it to a shelf, or recommend it to a friend) and see if any of your friends have read it.

Your comments about Goodreads and the average random person's opinion is spot on and one of the inspirations for wanting to build something new. I noticed that its my actual friends and family -- not necessarily a random person -- that have the biggest impact on what I read next. A book rec from a friend you respect goes a long way. Booqsi is attempting to harness some of that.

[nosedrip]

some great books you're mentioning here, I'd love to see your recommendations in an app like this, perhaps we'd need to move away from an algorithmic recommendation system, but rather influencers based on 'moods'? There is a radio station that works like this NTS, they even claim "not curated by algorithms", but still scalable and solid music. I love this concept.

[lacker]

Yeah, the problem to me with algorithmic recommendations is that they aren't sufficient. I don't see that an algorithm recommended book X, and then immediately go buy the book. No algorithm is that good.

So if I see an interesting book from the Amazon algorithm, the natural thing is to read the reviews, but book reviews are really hard for me to trust. So many people reading the book have a different background, different priorities, different reading ability, they are just looking for something different in a book. So when I read book reviews I simultaneously have to figure out "does this reviewer think like me?" and "is this the sort of book I want to read?" And Amazon or Goodreads book reviews are just too shallow for this.

Over time, though, I start to learn what book recommenders I can trust. Many different sources. Some friends of mine, some bloggers, some book awards, they like the same sort of book I do and I respect their recommendations.

I read a lot of books, though, and I'm not really sure if the "mass reading public" is similar enough to me for my personal product judgment to be relevant to the task of building a Goodreads competitor....

[o_____________o]

tastedive.com?