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Nov. 12th, 2014 08:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI'm not willing to buy books based on GoodReads recommendations. I wish there were an easy way to mark a book as something that interests me but that I don't have access to. I suppose I could make a shelf for that.
My experience with those books GoodReads thinks I'll like has, to date, been highly mixed. As many have been things I didn't like and didn't finish as have been things I enjoyed. I think I need to get more ruthless in clicking the not interested button on things I know I'll never even want to try. GoodReads is recommending a lot of doorstop books to me, and I know that I'll never read any of them. I can't get through such books any more.
A lot of those doorstops are coming up as recommendations for a shelf I called 'easy reads' that consists pretty much entirely of popcorn books. I'm not sure what about Mercedes Lackey, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Kerry Greenwood suggests doorstop science fiction. I wish there were a way to mark something as okay to recommend but wrong for the shelf for which it's being suggested.
At least, I seem to have trained GoodReads not to suggest vampire books, and it rarely suggests straight up urban fantasy for me now.
GoodReads did recently suggest a yaoi title to me that, entirely based on the blurb, makes me want to write. I'm pretty sure, based on genre conventions and reviews, that the book itself would annoy me as I don't buy rape turning to true love, particularly not in the space of a single manga volume. I just think that the premise could yield the sort of psychologically grim and complex story that I've been wanting to write recently.
(I should put that impulse toward Rheotaxis, if I'm going to write that sort of thing. My Yuletide assignment is entirely unsuited to my current mood, so I'm still letting possibilities stew in the back of my brain in hopes that something will come of it.)
My experience with those books GoodReads thinks I'll like has, to date, been highly mixed. As many have been things I didn't like and didn't finish as have been things I enjoyed. I think I need to get more ruthless in clicking the not interested button on things I know I'll never even want to try. GoodReads is recommending a lot of doorstop books to me, and I know that I'll never read any of them. I can't get through such books any more.
A lot of those doorstops are coming up as recommendations for a shelf I called 'easy reads' that consists pretty much entirely of popcorn books. I'm not sure what about Mercedes Lackey, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Kerry Greenwood suggests doorstop science fiction. I wish there were a way to mark something as okay to recommend but wrong for the shelf for which it's being suggested.
At least, I seem to have trained GoodReads not to suggest vampire books, and it rarely suggests straight up urban fantasy for me now.
GoodReads did recently suggest a yaoi title to me that, entirely based on the blurb, makes me want to write. I'm pretty sure, based on genre conventions and reviews, that the book itself would annoy me as I don't buy rape turning to true love, particularly not in the space of a single manga volume. I just think that the premise could yield the sort of psychologically grim and complex story that I've been wanting to write recently.
(I should put that impulse toward Rheotaxis, if I'm going to write that sort of thing. My Yuletide assignment is entirely unsuited to my current mood, so I'm still letting possibilities stew in the back of my brain in hopes that something will come of it.)
no subject
Date: 2014-11-12 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-11-14 01:35 pm (UTC)I take the GoodReads recommendations with a heaping spoonful of salt. I look at the blurbs and decide whether or not the book sounds remotely interesting. In some genres (mystery and romance, mainly), I'll try anything the library has because I'm not widely read enough to judge whether or not I'll like a book based on the blurb and cover image. I'm hoping to stumble across an author I really like, but I don't finish most of what I get that way.