Comments on: What I’m reading, what I’m writing, thinking about LibraryThing

By: kgs

kgs — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 21:21:10 +0000

I know, damn it, the one time in my life I do everything I can to go around the system, and what do I get? Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes!

Though, me, I understand… your wife? Dude, that’s playing with fire!

Anyway, if you get two extra copies, you should probably give one to a real A-list reviewer, like the Big Folks (TEV, Maud Newton, Galleycat, etc.). I mean, I’m not exactly known as a reviewer, and if you’re going to privilege people, THAT’S who I would go for.

Debi, thanks for that recommendation, and I’m going to wishlist it right away. (Hmmm. Wishlists. LibraryThing. Timmmmmmmm….)

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:57:44 +0000

You have to hand it to LibraryThing for being honest. I mean, you have a HUGE blog and I know and like you personally. If anyone should get a book for free, it’s you. But we’re principled! No nepotism around here. Speaking of which, if I can wrangle two copies out of Random House—my wife wants one too—I’ll send it your way.

By: Debi

Debi — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 20:15:44 +0000

I think I’ve recommended this to you before, but I’ll do it again, publicly here for other writers to see: read Margaret Atwood’s Negotiating with the Dead. I think you will love the thick, wry tone and the very alternating introspective and then academic slants to the essays. This is one of my favorite books about writing.

By: kgs

kgs — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:24:05 +0000

Nice post, Tim. I agree on the privacy/knowledge tension. I don’t really want LT to know me all that personally — I’m happy with LT’s rough cut. Do we want machines to know us that well? Is that a good goal? I think not. I’m happy with the compromise where you don’t know too much and your algorithms are only as smart as LT can make them within a reasonable privacy framework (though I think re-reading a book and attending author readings might be interesting indicators, and definitely, you only know the currently-owned part of my reading universe)… it was the sound of that phrase, “most likely to enjoy them,” which is far different from “X bought Y.” Maybe I was looking for “whose LT preferences suggest…” or something equally awkward. It was a snappy statement, but also just a tiny bit chill-making.

I’ll read that post tonight as my reward for plowing through all my paperwork today

By: Tim

Tim — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:49:31 +0000

Hey, check out my blog post on Clay Shirky’s “love” talk.
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2007/07/i-love-clay-shirky.php

Expanding on Clay, I write that “love is the ultimate algorithm.” As someone noted, that’s a good book title. I think it’s also the reason thingISBN works.
So, basically, I agree with you. It might be better to say “based on our current evidence” after every algorithmic claim. Maybe Amazon should say “people who bought X also bought Y, taking into account the fact that we don’t know most of the buying that goes on.” Maybe there’s some dehumanizing slide here. But it’s dehumanizing in the service of humanizing. Personalized recommendations replaced UNPERSONALIZED recommendations.

On your point about not tracking your “whole” library, we’ve talked about this before. Many people use tags to keep track of the “library of their head,” whether you bought it, took it out of a library or read it on a friend’s couch. That’s how I do it. But the system doesn’t offer finer control of this. It should. And it will.
Incidentally, there’s an obvious interesting tension here between knowing you better and privacy. You write that LibraryThing doesn’t know you carnally. That will always be true, but we could certainly ask you whom you’ve known carnally! And knowing that—and your religion, sexual orientation, gender, place of birth, ice cream preference—would all move LT closer to knowing you. A new LibraryThing rip-off—LovelyBooks.com, a German site that tries to speak English—does just a bit of that. But I don’t want my books associated with my gender.

By: kgs

kgs — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:31:21 +0000

The Sun is terrific reading. The issue about prayer, several back, was particularly amazing. Yes, you are right, The Sun needs more library subscribers.

By: Cal Gough

Cal Gough — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 11:55:54 +0000

So glad to read, in your list of regularly-read periodicals, that you subscribe to The Sun. For my money, no other magazine, with the exception of the New Yorker, is so dependably full of excellent, heart-penetrating writing. Month after month, year after year, decade after decade. Wish more people knew about it, and that more librarians would persuade their employers to subscribe to it.

Cal in Atlanta