Books by the same author do not match writing style?

[Kevin McEachern]

Hello,

I have only been tinkering around the site for a little while today and while I think it is a great idea and I truly hope this works out for you I am somewhat perplexed by the results I am seeing.  For instance, searching for a match on Asimov's The Naked Sun brings up several books by good authors but nothing else by Asimov himself? I would think his writing style does not vary that much from book to book. And even if it does statistically vary quite a bit, would it not make sense to recommend other books by the same author even with a lower match percentage? At the very least  make the author's name linkable to a page of all titles by that author. Just a suggestion.

Kevin

[Aaron Stanton]

In some cases, it makes sense for two books by the same author to match each other - and several do.  Certain authors are more consistent between books than others.  On the other hand, sometimes authors don't match themselves in style.  They change perspective, different stories lend to different action and pacing, etc.  That's not uncommon either.

So, it's not always absolutely expected that one author's book will match another of his/her books.  We could certainly have a section that lists other books in the database by the same author, but to force matches that don't really match probably wouldn't be a good idea.  For example, if I use Stephen King's The Stand to look for other books, it'd be a mistake to return Dolores Claiborne, which is an entirely different style.

There is a middle ground there, but not in mixing the results or forcing returns.  It'd have to be a sidebar of some sort, separate from the actual results, I think.

[Stephen Rollins]

I was thinking about this recently, although more along the lines of, what if you're reading a book that's part of a large series?  Will all them come up as near perfect matches, so that the other good matches by different authors don't make it to the top of the list?  Obviously some authors may change styles between books, but it doesn't make sense that that'd happen during a series.

[Kevin McEachern]

I would agree that you would not want to force the results, so probably the sidebar approach you mentioned might be a good alternative. That could possibly also address stephen's point about books in series which I would imagine have a similar issue in that statistically they could be very very different but a reader would still be interested in them. I do know that as an avid and voracious reader when I find a book I love I will definitely want to find more books similar to that one and the first point of reference is always the author. From that point on the graphs and data that booklamp provides would be incredibly useful in deciding which books to follow up with by pointing out the author's other works are different in style and/or pacing, etc. and suggesting other authors. My point is that as a user it throws the accuracy of the data and the usefulness of the service into question when the same author is not even mentioned.

[Randy McGirr]

My hunch is that extremely versatile authors can write books which vary greatly in terms of stylistic attributes. While most authors might exhibit a set pattern or a preferred pattern, there are, most likely, some authors who are more conscious about all the elements of their style and who are capable of great diversity in this area.

[Mandi Taylor]

I certainly agree about diversity...  Take Philip Pullman; he is most well known for the His Dark Materials trilogy, but he also writes books for younger children, like The Scarecrow and His Servant.  Some aspects of his style are the same for both types of books, but some areas are very different.
I would particularly like to see a comparison between Diana Wynne Jones' Power of Three and Fire and Hemlock, the first of which is for young readers while the second has the most convoluted plot I have ever read.

[Andy]

I have read quite a few Dean Koontz books, but I wouldnt recommend them all to someone that like the same books, they do tend to change book to book, and two in a row may match but then again they might not, like Aaron said, it depends on the story line, and to a certain extent, the mood the writer was in when he wrote that particular book.

In my opinion I think it is a bonus to not get books recommended from the same author, In fed up of it on amazon cause sometimes I dont want to read a book from the same author, I want to read something similar to a book that I liked that happened to be by that author!

For instance, Im reading Chris Moyles autobiography (he's the breakfast DJ for Radio 1 in England, has the most listeners in the country) and I like the way the book is written, but I may not want to read his second book and I may not want to read another autobiography cause I dont normally like them, it depends on the person and whether or not I actualy like them! I would never want to read George Bushs biography, not that it would be that long tho

[Brian Logan]

I was thinking about this recently, although more along the lines of, what if you're reading a book that's part of a large series?  Will all them come up as near perfect matches, so that the other good matches by different authors don't make it to the top of the list?  Obviously some authors may change styles between books, but it doesn't make sense that that'd happen during a series.

It would be useful to be able to explicitly exclude books by the same author in the recommendation, just so that other similar authors can be well ranked. Generally if you enjoy an author you check out other works of his so less recommendation is needed.
Conversely it might be useful to limit it to books of a single author, to prioritise books by prolific writers.

[Jo Red]

Hello,

I have only been tinkering around the site for a little while today and while I think it is a great idea and I truly hope this works out for you I am somewhat perplexed by the results I am seeing.  For instance, searching for a match on Asimov's The Naked Sun brings up several books by good authors but nothing else by Asimov himself? I would think his writing style does not vary that much from book to book. And even if it does statistically vary quite a bit, would it not make sense to recommend other books by the same author even with a lower match percentage? At the very least  make the author's name linkable to a page of all titles by that author. Just a suggestion.

Kevin

Well, the system is still prototype stage I guess. It requires further testing of many different scenarios before it gets to production level.  Anyway Booklamp is quite an interesting concept.  Maybe just requires a bit more refinement.

[Stephen Rollins]

It would be useful to be able to explicitly exclude books by the same author in the recommendation, just so that other similar authors can be well ranked. Generally if you enjoy an author you check out other works of his so less recommendation is needed.
Conversely it might be useful to limit it to books of a single author, to prioritise books by prolific writers.

Maybe there could be something like a 'Same-Author' filter that can be turned on or off?  Like Andrew said, there's some authors who really don't write the same book-to-book.  At the same time, there most certainly are authors who change their writing style.

[Aaron Stanton]

As for the importance of series - obviously, if you like the first book in a series, you'll probably read the second.  There's some argument to be made there that only the first book of a series should be matched. 

Regardless, a sidebar that lists the rest of the series or other books by the same author makes sense.  Or the ability to click on the author's name to see other books by the same author.  Currently, people use authors to determine which books they'll want to read later and nothing is likely to change that; I've devoured every Raymond E. Feist book that there is, and Stephen King as well (...well, just about).

But here's what I wonder - and this also reflects on the goal of the project.  I wonder if the reason I've stuck to those authors was because I could rely on their quality; I knew that they'd write within a certain action and pacing level, with a certain density.  I obviously only partly cared what the storylines were, because I hardly ever put down a Stephen King book because I didn't like the bookjacket description; there are some of King's storylines that I didn't care for much at all.

What I wonder is this - if you had handed me a list of books by different authors and said, "All of these books will fall inside your preferences in the same way that Stephen King's books do.  All you have to do is select the one with the most interesting storyline."  If someone had handed me that list, would I be so dependent on reading a single author until they're exhausted, or would I have at some point expanded to include other authors?

In its ideal form, BookLamp aims to lower the barriers between trying a new author and sticking to an old author.  I currently stick to one author because the chances of trying someone else and being disappointed are high; the final ideal of BookLamp is to offer a metric that can give the same security as going with a known author, but in such a way that you're exploring the field of literature, instead of staying huddled in the protection of one place.

I think I wandered a bit metaphorically there.    But there you go.

Aaron