As this is a blog aimed at people who like to read, I thought I would pass on a suggestion from Mark Frauenfelder, from the latest issue of the newsletter Recomendo:
"book.sv, is a free book recommendation engine built by scraping 43 million Goodreads users. I entered about ten favorite books, and the results impressed me. It surfaced other books I’ve read and loved, validating its taste-matching algorithm. More exciting were the new titles it suggested: intriguing picks I hadn’t encountered before (like Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze). Unlike Goodreads’ algorithm, this feels like getting suggestions from someone who actually understands my reading taste. — MF"
So I decided to try it. I entered 14 favorite books, ones that I had read more than once, and it gave me 30 book recommendations. Most were titles I knew about, all were authors I had heard of. Nineteen were books I had already read, which I guess shows that the recommendations work; I liked almost all of the books I had read, although a couple did not impress me much. There were only a couple of books I don't know much about, Light by M. John Harrison and The Cunning Man by Robertson Davies. But the recommended book I am likeliest to read next is The Magus by John Fowles; Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea were both Fowles fans. I probably should also try The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. (I read The Floating Opera in college and liked it, but I've never read any other Barth. RAW liked him.)
4 comments:
M. John Harrison's 'Light' might well appeal to RAW fans who appreciate cutting-edge sci-fi. Ages since I read it, but I remember loving/raving about it. Has William Gibson-influenced cyberpunk elements and galaxy-roaming mind-boggling surrealism. His prose seemed beautiful and striking to me (some reviewers called it "Literature"). At any rate, I think it should be much better known than it appears to be.
Well, playing with that ate up a quick hour.
The Sot-Weed Factor was enjoyable at 17. I reread it last year, and, 50 years later, I thought it was brilliant.
The Magus is in my TBR.
I liked THE MAGUS. While I have some interest in THE SOT-WEED FACTOR, my distaste for GILES GOAT-BOY has made me less eager to try other Barth books. (N.B.: I didn't actually finish GILES GOAT-BOY. About 100 pages in, I though to myself, "You know, I think I've gotten the fucking point.")
It recommended The Magus to me as well.
Barth spoke of The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy as twins. I suspect most RAW fans would take more enjoyment from the latter, it being more fantastic and more philosophical. Whereas SWF is of a more historical nature and a parody of an 18th century style. I found both extremely funny, but I also found GGB to be profound with its religious and mythological themes. It was tightly plotted based on Barth’s study of Joseph Campbell’s work.
GGB also contains a full rewrite of Oedipus Rex in comic rhyme, as Illuminatus! has the Rand parody, Telemachus Sneezed. And, like Illuminatus!, appears to have been written by a computer that is a character in the novel.
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