Why not start with a large database of books?

[Peter Delaney]

My first visit...possibly last for a while.

The current collection is paper thin and doesn't give me a clear idea of why I would be interested in the titles found. For the few cases where I knew the initial book and the subsequent recommended books, I completely disagree with the conclusion, as I thought the recommended books were simply awful by comparison . For example, in my opinion, none of the books recommended as "similar" (my word, not BookLamp's) to Perdido Street Station could hold a candle to that book (James Hogan and Alan Dean Foster!? Are you f***ing serious?). Without a deeper analysis of what constitutes good writing, the site ends up lumping great books with pale imitations. I shudder to think what would result if you plugged in Moby Dick. Please tell me the site wouldn't recommend ANY of the books currently listed.

I realize you have to start somewhere. It's just that the initial crop of books doesn't push the boundaries of writing complexity, symbolism, and narrative structure that are fundamental to a good book. As an avid Pandora listener, I am often pleasantly surprised by the choices made, but occasionally the site gets it so wrong that I wonder how much luck is involved versus hardcore analysis.

Anyway, I think the idea has merit, but as currently executed it is immature in the extreme.

[Michael Guy]

well, like pandora, there's more to music than patterns of frequency analysis, and the book lists are rather sterile at the moment for any critical alalysis to be meaningful.

I guess it couldn't hurt to add more general literature, jurassic park shouldn't necessarily lead to Chaucer or pygmalion or mein kampf, though, how would we know unless it was in the database... hint hint. though i'd like to see what would come up for mein kampf and other such "banned books in history" as the bible, huckleberry fin, etc.

in my mind, the easiest way would be to put out "the word" that you'd like pre-formatted text files, set out a protocol for how to sort data, and either set up a javascript applet or a few perl/CGI scripts or something that can be run remotely or locally, i.e. a web applet or a server script. this would be insanely easier than waiting for publishers and authors for access to ebooks or manuscripts, proofs, hardcopy, etc. and there's the internet, most books are already OCR'd for translation and illegal distribution, or held in google/amazon's data warehouses as raw scans.

The idea is that it would take in an RTF or HTML document and spew out a properly parsed text file for a database/processor to sort through in bulk. this would just make the process easier for submissions and for bulk additions, as well as for future expansions and development/recovery of data. as for OCR and translations, well it is the internet...

i know that there's oh, let's say easily 100k books in all genres, and in varying ebook formats that could be converted to TXT/RTF/HTML, and by opening the process up to the big bad world, you'd get a lot of enthusiasts with spare time to get you started. however as i believe i pointed out earlier, legality is a problematic endeavour when dealing with literature, and you don't want the luddites of the publishing community to burn the walls down around you (figuratively, perhaps literally) before you even get out of beta.

[ludger peters]

i cant wait to see more books in this database

[Stephen Rollins]

I think everyone would, and they're working as hard as possible to get that to happen sooner rather than later.

Er... you are, right?   

[Andy]

Keep wanting to tell my mates but kinda want to wait till its all up and running and the interface is what they want it to be, with search bar and such.

First impressions count double and all that!

[Renee Neumeier]

If you're looking for a good source just to find books and not just ones on a best seller list, I would suggest Booklist, Library Journal and School Library Journal.  They have reviews of a variety of titles and also include the ISBN numbers, and the genre in some cases.  I work at a library and we order books based on the reviews in those journals.