Thursday, March 22, 2007

Week Three, Thing Seven

This week I discovered Library Thing, an online service that among many other things, allows people to catalog their book collections. You can tag your books as you like, export your data, and, what I like most of all, find book recommendations.

Currently, I'm reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. A most outstanding novel and one of the best books I've read in some time. When I type the title of this book into Library Thing's Book Suggester, it tells me that 3200 people who use Library Thing own this book, only 95 books are more popular, 55 people have reviewed the title on Library Thing, and it shows books with similar tags, library subjects, other books owned by people who own this title, and finally, suggestions for other books to read.

I have read and loved at least four of the ten titles recommended by Library Thing. Amazing! Can you guess which books? All right, I'll tell you: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, The Hours by Michael Cunningham, plus I've read and enjoyed books by Dave Eggers, one of the recommended authors. How utterly fantastic.

1 comment:

Mana Tominaga said...

Thanks for your message on my blog, btw! So we will be doing another "Staff Picks" for April's Library Week at AB - I'll definitely miss your input this round.

I loved "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon myself. And I must say, the suggestions from LibraryThing are often quite accurate.