h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Anyone use it?

I only heard about it as a result of the fuss from Amazon buying it (and I can understand why users would be unhappy). And I signed up for an account.

I think it is bloody marvellous. Have now read three books based on it's user comparison recommendation engine and all three have been brilliant and I loved them.

It is really handy.

FB

P.S. I am http://www.goodreads.com/rferrett

glad to see you found it
I love it - although I would prefer them to enable me to re-read books without deleting the old dates

Yeah it is wicked. I hope Amazon don't ruin it.

Though I'd imagine the thing they stand to gain from it is improving their recommendation engine. THerefore it stands to reason it would be in their interests not to put people off using it.

FB

I wonder about all the Amazon stuff though - I don't have my Goodreads account connected to the same mail account that I use for Amazon so to them I'm just a name We'll see.

The recommendations are brilliant though, and it is very easy to get into a discussion about particular books, and their authors sometimes.

I think what Amazon want is all the meta stuff. User 1 likes ABC was recommended D and loved it. Helps their business model.

FB

I use it, too. In fact, I follow Sho there. I also love it, for the great recommendations.

I wasn't too bothered when I found out Amazon bought it, though I guess we'll see what happens. Presumably they'll kill the links to other vendors's web sites, but I can't remember ever using one of the "purchase from X" links anyway. If Amazon would implement the recommendation system that Goodreads has, that would be great, IMO - I find theirs to be a lot more accurate (and to include a lot less stuff I've already read or already own).

Sho, would you believe it's never occurred to me to update when I re-read a book?

it only occurred to me recently when I re-read some YA Urban Fantasy and wondered what would happen to my 2012 "Target" if I changed the dates to 2013. I may write to them to ask about that.

It's not that long since Amazon insisted that Goodreads change their search function to disallow searching Amazon websites to find editions of books. I don't use it to purchase books anyway but I have had some good recs from friends on there so for someone like me, it's a great site. I used to keep a diary here of what I was reading so I'm updating my Goodreads "back catalogue" bit by bit. It's highly addictive.

I think as some point when I am bored I may well sit in my spare room (which is also where I keep bookshelves) and go through retrospectively rating all the books there I have read.

Interesting to look at your "average" score. Obviously though the books you have read are a self selecting bunch. Unless you read everything then most times you have triaged stuff before you start reading so you arel ikely to rate everything you can be bothered to rate more highly than average.

Also forgettable books you, , tend to forget you have read them!

FB

>I think as some point when I am bored I may well sit in my spare room (which is also where I keep bookshelves) and go through retrospectively rating all the books there I have read.

I did that. I did it long enough ago, that many of my books were still in storage bins. Now that we've moved to a place where we can fit more bookcases (all of which are almost full, of course), I mean to get to the others. And I am sure there are some I've bought since that I forgot to rate at the time. I've got about 800-900 titles in there, though, so that ought to get me some decent recommendations.

I'm always curious how sites with decent metrics for recommendations manage to pull it off. Several years ago, Netflix (film rental and streaming) actually had a contest where they asked subscribers to design a better recommendation system. Sadly, they then did away with their "friends" feature, which, among other things, made recommendations based on ratings by friends with similar tastes. Now it seems that recommendations are based on overall average ratings of all users, so if I give a specific new release four stars, they more or less predict that I'll enjoy every film that was released that month just as much.

on that's a bit rubbish, their old system sounds good.

FB is right though, the books are fairly self-selecting (at least in my case) so there do tend to be a lot of highly rated ones.

What I'd also like to see is the 3 main categories (the book has to be in either To Read, Currently Reading or Read) expanded to include Started But Gave Up. I had to make a shelf for that but then I have to put the book in the Read category to make it count.

Yes, a "started and gave up" shelf would be a good thing to have. And I agree about the self-selecting part - a majority of my "Read" titles are rated highly, too. I think I did include some books we were forced to read in school which I really disliked, in order to avoid having similar stufff recommended - like Austen and Faulkner. These days, I rarely finish anything that bores me to tears, and I'd rather be able to file as "couldn't finish it" as opposed to "hated it" (but I suppose "hated it" works, for recommendation purposes, anyway).

Is the same with films for me too. I tend to only watch certain genres, directors or films bigged up by friends or critics I know have similar film tastes to me.

I'd say an average punter should always on average score higher than a pro critic.

FB