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automatic recommendations

I use librarything to keep track of my reading and find new books to read. However, I tend to ignore the 'recommendations' tab in favor of clicking on 'recommendations' based on an individual book. I've also noticed that the recommendations in the all-time recommendations tab rarely change. So...let's make them change. I'm going to keep track of:

  1. why do i think this book is being recommended?
  2. does the book seem like something I'd like?
  3. did i actually like the book?

These are the books I'm starting with:

These are the first books listed on the "all-time" recommendations list. I'm going to try to read all of them before seeing how the recommendation list changes. I'm also going to rate/review the books on librarything, since I have a bad habit of not doing so.

Immaculate Conception, by Ling Ling Huang
  1. I've read Natural Beauty, by the same author. I've also read a handful of other female body horror books.
  2. description meantions obsession and tortured artists. I also enjoyed the author's other book.
  3. Mixed feelings. Something about it felt incomplete. You don't really understand what the plot is until the ending, when you realize that Enka's obsession with Mathilde is the plot. It's one of those novels that chronicles an entire life, more or less. I'd say it's solidly okay. I somewhat enjoyed it.
Babel, by RF Kuang
  1. Sounds like a magic + academia book.
  2. see above. However, I just finished Katabasis (same author), which I didn't like.
  3. Ended up dismissing the rec---I just don't fucking want to read it.
Elusive, by Genevieve Cogman
  1. I read the entire "Invisible Library" series that the author wrote.
  2. honestly, history + vampires isn't something I like.
  3. Turns out this is the second book in a series. I dismissed the recommendation.
Mood Swings, by Frankie Barnet
  1. disillusioned 20somethings, something about tech, sounds like commentary on society; I've certainly read a few novels in this trend.
  2. disillusionment, humanities grads, 20somethings struggling with the real world.
  3. Something about the author's prose is so grating that I abandoned it after a few pages.
Tender, by Beth Hetland
  1. I used to read a bit of body horror, extreme horror, and other contemporary horror by female writers.
  2. it's a graphic novel! description mentions obsession. I'm not a big fan of body horror or commentary on women's roles in society though.
  3. The main character wants her perfect life---marriage and a kid---and meets a guy she thinks is the one. Not everything is within her control. She becomes desperate and copes poorly. The body horror part was well-executed and had my stomach turning. Overall, I wasn't a fan of it. Definitely shouldn't have read it while eating dinner. I don't like stories which focus on pregnancy.
Euthyphro, by Plato
  1. I'd been working through a volume of Plato's works two summers ago.
  2. not super interested on the relation between ethics and religion. might enjoy seeing how the arguments get made though.
  3. Aggravating. Euthyphro makes an argument, Socrates points out the flaws in his logic, rinse and repeat.
Rethinking Diabetes, by Gary Taubes
  1. Binged some of his books, and related low-carb high-fat books, at the suggestion of a once-acquaintance.
  2. I'm going to get annoyed. Of the books on this list, this is the one I'm least interested in reading.
  3. I read the introduction, and that was enough to know this book was not for me. Not rating or reviewing for this reason.
Ripe, by Sarah Rose Etter
  1. I think I kept seeing this one getting recommended in conjunction with female rage or female horror or disillusioned females. Probably alongside Boy Parts, by Eliza Clark?
  2. i'm not interested in a "journey through our late-capitalist hellscape."
  3. The prose was offputting. The author uses so many colons, each more jarring than the last. The black hole, presumably a metaphor for depression, was very "in your face." I abandoned it at 10%.
Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield
  1. think this one also came up in similar contexts as the aforementioned 'ripe.'
  2. sounds like a bit of psychological horror. could be good.
  3. I really wanted to like this. Woman returns from an underseas expedition and is acting like a different person sounds enticing. I thought this would be psychological horror, maybe something about trauma, or some sort of character study. Instead, I'm greeted with a narrator who is keen on reminiscing over the past for reasons that aren't clear and have no obvious relation to the story. What is the story? Woman watches her wife act strangely, kinda shrugs it off, prefers to think about her dead mother and why she married her wife? Abandoned partway through.
Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut
  1. I've read a handful of his other books.
  2. I've enjoyed his other books.
  3. Purely commentary? DNF at 30 pages in...it's not particularly compelling.
    It was as though the country were saying to its citizens, “In nonsense is strength.”
A Sorceress Comes to Call, by T. Kingfisher
  1. I've seen the author's name come up in conjunction with dark fantasy (ex. Scholomance); surprised I've'nt read any of her(?) books.
  2. I see fantasy, magic, family secrets, and hints of trauma. Yeah.
  3. Initial thoughts (1/6 of the way in) are that I love it and am devouring it. The bits about secrets ring true; these are things I was told when I was younger.

    Final thoughts---I devoured this book in a few short hours. The fantasy elements were well-constructed. While there's no grand 'this is how magic works in this world,' there's hints of what magic had once been, and descriptions of what the mother is capable of doing. The stakes seem small (everything is within the family), but there's a creeping feeling of horror as you begin to see how necessary it is for the characters to destroy the mother. Characters were well-developed; their motivations are evident, so you can understand why they behave the way they behave. Hester is such a spunky, intelligent old woman; I enjoyed seeing her think her way through things. Great read. Would recommend for people who love fantasy and well-developed characters.
Ducks, by Kate Beaton
  1. I've read many other graphic novel memoirs.
  2. see above.
  3. I can't believe I put off reading this memoir for so long. It's a well-written reflection about the author's time working in the oil sands. She discusses her complicated feelings about it. She doesn't portray events & people as strictly good or evil; she sees the nuances in pretty shitty situations. Definitely a worthwhile read.

Some notes:

Observations:

20260308. I used librarything a few years ago, and stopped using it for a bit. Might've only been a year. I'd mostly signed up for it because of a guy who I'd been talking to in...2023-2024? Thereabouts. At the time, my reading was heavily influenced by his tastes, while I was struggling to articulate and find time for my own tastes. I kept reading things he mentioned, things he was reading, things on his tbr, things I thought he'd be interested, and things I thought he'd appreciate me reading. In short, my reading was not for myself. I think I stopped using librarything sometime in 2024---either I was reading less, or, come to think of it, I dropped out of college and some other things fell apart. This is a long way of saying that I've ignored the recommendations tab on librarything because it doesn't feel like an accurate representation of my current reading tastes. I started using librarything again in December of last year (2025, at the time of writing), and I don't read as much as I used to. I don't think it's recommendations yet reflect my (current) tastes.

current

The other reason I've ignored the recommendations is because I keep seeing them. After reading a book, I look it up on Goodreads, and scroll through the books that readers also liked. When you click on one of the books and check the recommendations, the same books will often be mentioned again. For example, Ripe and Our Wives Under the Sea are titles which I've seen too many fucking times. Ducks is another example, though it's mentioned many times on the back of other books ("quote of praise" by Kate Beaton, author of Ducks), or mentioned in the context of graphic novels. Unfair to include it in this paragraph because it is a book which has received wide acclaim.

Mood Swings is a book I came across on my own. I'd downloaded it for some reason or other; I think it's the only book on this list which I've planned on reading before. The rest of these books seem to be a representation of a past I no longer ascribe to.

So why read these?---curiosity. I want to know if I like these. Did I ever enjoy these kinds of books? Have my tastes changed, or developed, or evolved? Also, if I read them, librarything can't keep recommending them... I'll no longer be reminded of books I should like or should have read or should have something-or-other-ed. Another note is that, until now, I've'nt reviewed books on librarything. I add them to my library, and that's that. No rating. No review. Rarely a tag, though I'd benefit from making more use of that feature. I am rating these, so I wonder how that's going to impact my recommendations.

After reading a book, my instinct is to look for more books like it. I'm temporarily banned from doing this. I am reading these twelve books, and then I'll find out what the next twelve books are. That's that. No looking around or reading books that aren't a part of this experiment. This is frustrating. I am annoyed with myself. I'm fasting from a behavior that I typically engage in. I wonder how much more I'll read when I actually read instead of looking for books to read.

20260309. I'm having slight regrets. I think I'm alternating between something I think I'll like and something I know I don't want to read. I started with Tender (sounded interesting), then Euthyphro (meh), then A Sorceress Comes to Call (loved it), then Rethinking Diabetes (not interested), and now Our Wives Under the Sea (it's short, too). Something about this experiment seems like a mistake. I just want to know what the new book recommendations are going to be. Also...hmm, how do I think of this? None of these are truly what I want to read right now. I want some sort of witchy memoir. Or I want something else entirely which I can't name and which isn't a book.

In my desire to see new recommendations, I find myself racing to keep reading. Am I reading for enjoyment? Somewhat, but not entirely. As if I'm in class, I'm reading to keep up with the syllabus, to complete my homework assignment. As of now, I've enjoyed 1/4 of the recommendations. I think this is going to escalate to 2/5. I wonder if I can go as far as to be done with a sixth book tonight. Though done does not mean 'finished reading;' it means 'gave it a chance.'

20260318. I feel as if I half-assed this challenge. I did not give every book a solid chance. These recommendations are not an accurate representation of what I want to read---no, that's some sort of lie. I believed I'd like 7/12 books. I actually liked 2/12 (which is 2/7 of my predicted likes). That's not a remarkable number. That's a resounding failure. Some of these were books I just did not want to read. Some of them were not well-written; looking at you, Ripe and Our Wives Under the Sea.

Of the 10 books I started reading, I only finished five of them. This is not a good rate. Either I read 10% of the book, or I finished the book; there was no in-between. I think this speaks to why I abandoned the books---the prose was grating, or the author was doing something that annoyed me. I didn't give the plot a chance. Had I pushed forward---no, there was no reason to push forward.

This is what the recommendations list looks like now:

According to librarything, I like these genres. The number in parenthesis represents how many books with this genre are in my library.

Curiously, one of my other most-read categories, Biography & Memoir, with 39 books, is not on this list.

I would like to displace some of these subjects with Food & Cooking (current: 13) and Religion & Spirituality (current: 12). I do not know if reading enough books to overcome the Science & Nature category will actually upend the list of genres I like. However, I would like to test if I can achieve this. Here is my new reading list:

Food & cooking:

Once I have finished reading the books on this list, I will post an updated picture of the recommendations list, as well as what my 'most read' tags (that appear on the recommendations page) are. I would like to complete this within the next month.

Side note---when do I add a cookbook to my library? Must I try a few recipes, or is noting that I skimmed it enough? I've downloaded and skimmed many cookbooks, deleting them when I see nothing I want to try. ARRRGGGHHH.