Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Tuesday Thingers: Recommendations

Today's topic: Recommendations. Do you use LT's recommendations feature? Have you found any good books by using it? Do you use the anti-recommendations, or the "special sauce" recommendations? How do you find out about books you want to read?

I do use the recommendations, but I don't bother with a lot of the adjunctive features; I found they were redundant and mostly just suggested books already offered or ones I already owned. The anti-recommendations seemed split between ones I do already own and ones I'd never bother buying ever.
I find I get a lot of recommendations either from my friends list or member suggestions. I stalk my friends' recently added lists and get a lot of ideas from that. I've been known to email them to ask where they found certain unusual items (though the answers are usually something along the lines of "I was on vacation in this tiny village outside of Munich and I found this little shop in someone's back closet where they had a single copy of this volume, and incidentally the retail price was 100 euros" which tends to be disheartening). I mean, if with my weird tastes I think something's actually obscure and unusual, it's probably truly obscure and unusual, not just a mass market paperback I somehow missed in the NYT best seller list. It's a lot of fun doing this and it's an always-changing recommendation list I love. My LT friends have eclectic interests and tastes, and there's always something fascinating and promising among what they're newly cataloguing or reviewing.
I did get some ideas from the built-in LT recommendation lists, but since they're pretty static, it was more of a one time shot. Mostly what I found were volumes I'd already heard of but hadn't thought of for a while, but which I moved to my BookMooch wishlist (which functions as a TBR/to buy one day list for me as well as a Mooch list). It was classics, both among adult and children's literature for the most part, which I enjoyed seeing as recommendations, but there was very little new or surprising. Still, I really appreciate the feature and do check it periodically.

5 comments:

Traci said...

I love the feature on the new LT homepage that lets you see the books recently added by your 'connections'. I think it's more helpful, and definitely more interesting, than the suggester

jlshall said...

My anti-rec list had lots of books I already own, too. Maybe LT is trying to tell me something!

By the way, I've nominated your blog for an award! See my post here. But please feel free not to "play" if you don't want to.

Anonymous said...

my BM wishlist seems to have become a "what books I probably won't ever get unless I buy them" list. I've gotten so many of the books on my WL, that I'm down to the "rarely posted", so now I've planted the ARC books on it, so I can check to see which ones are heavier WL'ed and to help figure out what to read next.

BTW, I nominated your blog for an award: http://thekoolaidmom.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/i-have-been-nominated/ :-D

Anonymous said...

LOL.. hust read your LT TT check-in... I actually do stay awake Monday nights to snatch up the Tuesday Thing question and post my answer. I slept in until about 10:30 this morning, though ;-) I got up long enough to put Mags on the summer school bus.

Joanne ♦ The Book Zombie said...

I also have a tendency to stalk my friends recently added lists, its a feature that I really enjoy having.