Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

This makes me think of the once and future Hypatia at Alexandria Digital Literature; that was a great recommender, and hopefully will be running again some day.

Hm, I think I have read all those on that list except for The Barefoot Princess and Full Speed.

I would highly recommend any of the Tami Hoag books that take place in Minnesota though - she can be hit or miss for me, but “Ashes to Ashes,” “Dust to Dust,” “Prior Bad Acts,” “Night Sins,” and “Guilty as Sin” all were fantastic romantic suspense books (some of the characters recur through the books).

So weird. Being the narcissist I am, I entered my own novel title and got recommendations for books by Academy Award-nominated Tom Perotta, former poet laureate Robert Pinsky and potty-mouth Steve Almond (I can say that as I know him). What do I have in common with any of these gents? I once did a reading with all of them. How did this site know that?

You can give it more than one book you’ve liked, and the answers will get more and more specific to those books.  Although, I think you may have to register to do that - but I also believe it’s free.

If I remember correctly, the site bases its responses on what people who have read, say ‘High Noon’, also liked.  If you had given the system four or five contemporary romances, you likely wouldn’t have gotten the historicals in there.

Anybody hear of or have opinions about Sarah Monette?  I’m supposed to read her stuff.

It’s a lot like Netflix for books.  :-)

Wryhag-

Sarah Monette is fantastic (in both senses of the word). I’ve read Melusine, The Virtu, and Mirador and enjoyed them immensely. The relationship between Felix and Mildmay is dark and complicated and constantly shifting and is what keeps me coming back for more.

I’m not sold on this, though it seems fun to play around with.  I put “Bet Me” by Cruise and got the following selections:
the Free Lunch - Spider Robinson
Murder By Deception - D. R. Meredith
Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe - Nan Lyons, Ivan Lyons
Family Man - Jayne Ann Krentz
The Wizard of Whitechapel - Simon Hawke
Gate of Ivory - Doris Egan
For Love of Evil: Book Six of Incarnations of Immortality - Piers Anthony
Howling at the Moon - Karen Macinerney
The Wizard of Seattle - Kay Hooper See
Maybe Baby - Lani Diane Rich

In reading their descriptions, I don’t think I’d really like any of these books.  Hmmm.

D. R. Meredith’s “Murder By” books used to be hard to find.  In fact, I don’t even admit to having copies in case someone wants to borrow them and I know I won’t get them back.  There’s a story arc through the series of books although each mystery is complete in itself.

She has had two other series about a sheriff in the Texas Panhandle and a reading group meeting at a book store but neither of these had the same appeal.

Steph’s not the only narcissist.  I put in Adiós and this is what it gave me:

Our Recommendations

These are our suggestions based on readers’ recommendations.

Oh My Goth - Gena Showalter
6X: The Uncensored Confessions - Nina Malkin
Alphabetical Hook-Up List A-J - Phoebe McPhee
Miss Match: A Lauren Holbrook Novel - Erynn Mangum
Waking Lazarus - T. L. Hines
The Book of Luke - Jenny O’Connell
The E Before Christmas - Matt Beaumont
JAMES BOND: THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. - Ian. Flemming
The Pursuit of Happiness - Tara Altebrando
Kissing Doorknobs - Terry Spencer Hesser

I’m a wee bit bemused by The Spy Who Loved Me, but hey, it might be the only time I’ll ever even marginally be on the same list with Flemming, so okay then.

And Stephanie, apologies for shortening your name.  I did it automatically since it seems every Stephanie I know shortens to Steph.

That and I’m severely sleep-deprived at the moment.

It’s interesting but I have to wonder.

I entered in The Spymaster’s Lady by the newly published JOanna Bourne and all I got were two titles:

The Serpent Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
Dedication by Janey Mullany.

I know neither of these ladies’ books
so have no idea if they have similar characteristics to Bourne’s novel.

It doesn’t seem to be driven by any great set of metadata on the back-end as Netflix or Lastfm are.

I’d like to point out that everybody’s local library probably has one or more databases that do the same thing, and which quite likely allow you to select the subject headings under the book that you like which you want in your recommendations.  Say you put in a book at NoveList involving a secret baby and pirates.  You want another romance with pirates but you don’t really care one way or another about the secret baby.  You check “love stories” (which seems to be the genre heading NoveList uses for the concept of genre romance- Romance seems to mean more along the line of Romantics) and “pirates,” and it knows those are the parts of the book that you like.

The other most common one besides NoveList is actually called “What Do I Read Next?”, which confused me when I saw this post and I thought “That’s not available without a subscription!”

I put in “Portrait of a Killer” by Patricia Cornwell and they recommended (among others) a Garrison Keillor book.  ????!!!!

Sarah Monette is fantastic (in both senses of the word). I’ve read Melusine, The Virtu, and Mirador and enjoyed them immensely. The relationship between Felix and Mildmay is dark and complicated and constantly shifting and is what keeps me coming back for more.

Thank you, Billie!  I’m intrigued and must look into this further.

I already use Amazon’s ‘Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought’ list to expand my reading.  I put in a contemporary series that I liked immensely, Anything for You by Sarah Mayberry, and got books that sound like my cup of tea EXCEPT they’re paranormals.  I studiously (in my small minded way) avoid books with either maps or unknown human forms.  What the heck is a Valkyrie anyway and would I be interested in their romantic lives?  But the site’s a cute idea?

Ha, Barb--the first thing I did was enter my books, too. I got books that made sense. But the process creeped me out. Do you ever call your own house and hope to hell you don’t answer?

Barb,

No worries on the name abbreviation. I answer to almost anything (including siblings’ names). Thanks for not leaving me hanging as the sole narcissist.

Stephanie

If they were really really smart they’d find a way to scam...er..stea...er reverse eng...create something similar to the Pandora.org classifications for music. Good lord, I’d never leave the damned house if I had pandora and hot romances available on demand like that.

I think this is how it works: Members of the website enter lists of their favorite books and then, when you enter in what book you just read, it gives you a list of books that commonly show up on the same favorites list as the book you just read.  So, while I think it’s a good concept, a lot of what you get depends on the “good” taste of others.

I was curious, so I randomly put in Lover Unbound by J.R. Ward. My recs were surprising:

Carpe Demon: Adventures of a Demon-Hunting Soccer Mom - Julie Kenner
The Prince - Nicolo Machiavelli, Ian Richardson
Urban Shaman - C. E. Murphy
Ship of Destiny - Robin Hobb
Undead and Unemployed - Mary Janice Davidson
Undead and Unwed - MaryJanice Davidson
The Iliad - Homer, Peter Jones, D.C.H. Rieu, E.V. Rieu S
Beowulf: A New Translation - Seamus Heaney
The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
The Tell-Tale Heart - Edgar Allan Poe

The whole undead thing seems relevant but I’m scratching my head at The Prince, Iliad, Beowulf, Canterbury Tales and The Tell-Tale Heart. WTF?

I’m too scared to do it again for fear Tolstoy’s War and Peace might show up on the list.

Shame it doesn’t also tell you if the books are any good!

Oh man, I just spent 10 minutes entering titles to see what they’d suggest. It’s addictive . . . and as others have said, some of the suggestions are a little wonky, but then so are most people’s reading tastes.

I like Library Thing’s message boards for reading suggestions. People tell what they’re reading and whether and why they like it (or don’t).

I put in The River Knows by Amanda Quick and got:
Vampire, Interrupted - Lynsay Sands
EVA Moves the Furniture - Margot Livesey
Behind the Scenes at the Museum - Kate Atkinson
The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

Not one of them appears to have anything to do with a historical romance/mystery.  And then there was the absolutely strange result I got for White Night by Jim Butcher:  Telling Lies for Fun & Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers - Lawrence Block

....

I entered in Harry Potter and a few other fantasy novels (more in the YA arena) that I like to read, and a recommendation was David Mamet’s Oleanna.

WTH. This is cracked.

HeartBreaker by Julie Garwood is really good, actually. Nora Roberts is one of my favorite Contemporary writers, and so is Julie Garwood. Not nearly as prolific, but a very good writer. Her prose is lovely.