Grasping for the Wind

Booklamp.org

I know, I know, the title of the post makes you think that I've found some site that sells lamps made of books, or perhaps reading lights designed to make reading easier.

But Booklamp.org is much more awesome than that. A program/site that is currently in beta testing, booklamp.org is like Pandora for books. Their website explains it well.

BookLamp.org is a system for matching readers to books through an analysis of writing styles, similar to the way that Pandora.com matches music lovers to new music. Do you like Stephen King’s It, but thought it was too long? The technology behind BookLamp allows you to find books that are written with a similar tone, tense, perspective, action level, description level, and dialog level, while at the same time allowing you to specify details like... half the length. It’s impervious to outside influences - like advertising - that impact socially driven recommendation systems, and isn’t reliant on a large user base to work.

The geeks have once again been visionary. I'd love something like this. I mean how many times has a reviewer (and I'm in this category) or a friend misdirected you in suggesting you read something that they liked. You ended up hating it. This new site will try and take the guesswork out of that. Watch the video to watch it in action. It's about thirteen minutes long, but its worth listening to the idea.

I signed up for the free beta test and tried it out myself. I put in GRRM's Dying of the Light and got recommendations for Kate Elliott (56%) and Lester Del Rey (56%). I put in Michale Moorcock and got Ben Bova as the best match (78%). I'd say that is a pretty good match of writing style. Of course, there are only 179 books in the database right now, all science fiction novels, so right now it is imperfect and gives back comparisons that might not make a lot of sense. But the more books there are, the better the system will work.

I think this is an awesome idea, and I hope these guys can make it work. Help them out by testing it out for yourself.

HT: Provocative Church

Posted by John on April 23, 2008 03:37 PM | Posted to Literature and Language
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