How Accurate Is Goodreads’s “Readers Also Enjoyed” Feature?

As an avid bookworm obsessed with tracking my speechmaking and discovering caller favorites, I’m connected Goodreads regularly. The treatment boards, giveaways, and yearly extremity support maine coming backmost implicit and implicit again. I deliberation I’ve tracked my speechmaking determination for astatine slightest six years, and my TBR support is afloat of remnants from each signifier of my reading, particularly the YA dystopian romances of my teenagehood. On aggregate occasions, I’ve recovered caller books erstwhile perusing the leafage for a favourite successful the “readers besides enjoyed” feature. Lately I’ve been wondering, though, conscionable however close that instrumentality is. So, I decided to trial it out, speechmaking 13 books related to 1 of my favourite novels to compare.

Picking a Book to Test

Onto the existent reading. I chose a beauteous divisive book, alternatively than a crowd-pleaser, to spot however close the recommendations would be. If I chose a ace fashionable book, I figured the remainder of the recommendations would conscionable beryllium much ace fashionable reads. So, I picked Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. It’s some chiseled capable to polarize audiences and fashionable capable that the algorithm had capable to enactment with that its accuracy could beryllium tested.

At archetypal glance, not a batch of these books look connected external-to-Goodreads “books similar I’m Thinking of Ending Things” recommendation lists, which is interesting. I’d person thought, with truthful galore readers shelving the aforesaid books implicit and implicit again, they’d beryllium linked unneurotic connected proposal lists and the similar frequently.

But the Goodreads algorithm doesn’t instrumentality into relationship the circumstantial aspects of a publication a scholar mightiness enjoy. Lists that person I’m Thinking of Ending Things are often focused connected the intelligence fearfulness facet oregon the benignant of astonishment reveal-at-the-end crippled style. When an algorithm conscionable takes into relationship that tons of readers work each of these books, it stands to crushed a idiosyncratic who enjoys horror, successful general, volition prime up caller releases oregon fashionable reads wrong the genre, not needfully lone speechmaking intelligence fearfulness oregon fearfulness with chiseled crippled styles. That explains the inclusion of McCurdy’s memoir. That book’s conscionable plain popular! It besides means that these lists are apt to not beryllium precise diverse: determination is simply a disproportionate magnitude of achromatic authors represented here.

My Personal Test

Out of the books listed nether I’m Thinking of Ending Things, I read:

• Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca
• Bunny by Mona Awad
• I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
• Come Closer by Sara Gran
• My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
• The Cabin astatine the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
• A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
• Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak
• Nothing by Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
• We Need to Do Something by Max Booth III
• The Last House connected Needless Street by Catriona Ward
• Comfort Me With Apples by Cathrynne M. Valente
• This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno

The things I bask astir astir I’m Thinking of Ending Things are the gathering dread and the seeming cloaking of the reader’s eyes to what’s truly going connected until the end. The benignant of publication that is wholly antithetic aft uncovering retired caller accusation astatine the extremity and it changing however you spot the full thing. A pulling retired of the rug from nether my knowing of the novel. So, erstwhile speechmaking these, those are the sorts of things I was looking for to find however akin the recommendations were.

And, really, a batch of them did have an facet of hiding thing from the scholar and/or the main character.

Comfort Me with Apples is astir a housewife surviving with her hubby successful a location excessively large for her and discovering that things successful her cleanable assemblage aren’t arsenic they seem. We Need to Do Something is astir a household trapped successful a bath aft a tornado with strange, unexplained happenings extracurricular the doorway they tin lone unfastened a fewer inches. The Last House connected Needless Street is afloat of shiftings of what’s really happening arsenic a pistillate searches for her sister’s imaginable kidnapper oregon murder.

Not truthful overmuch the titular story, but the 2nd abbreviated communicative successful Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes, astir a mates connected a distant land aft the termination of their son, was majorly ambiguous. In some of Tremblay’s novels this is present, but particularly The Cabin astatine the End of the World, arsenic a household is challenged to determine which of them should beryllium killed to forestall the apocalypse that could oregon could not beryllium happening extracurricular the windows.

This Thing Between Us astir a antheral whose world is dissolving aft the decease of his woman is 1 of the much ambiguous endings I’ve read, and Hidden Pictures has a large pulling-the-wool implicit the eyes of the main quality and scholar arsenic a young miss becomes a live-in-nanny for a well-off household and her charge, a young and quiescent boy, draws weirder and weirder pictures. Bunny’s unusual clique and the goings-on down the scenes, too, portion possibly little ambiguous than the others connected the list, bash permission questions successful their aftermath.

Does that mean I liked each of the recommendations? Of people not. An algorithm successful wide would person a hard clip sussing retired what bits and pieces a scholar connects to, and truthful it’s inevitable immoderate of those it included volition beryllium a plaything and a miss. Reid’s penning benignant is besides a immense happening I similar astir the novel, but the styles of others conscionable didn’t link with maine arsenic much. What I’m consenting to judge successful 1 communicative mightiness beryllium excessively far-fetched successful different successful the eyes and words of a antithetic character, successful a antithetic time. I attempted to work the 2 majorly body-horror novels (Tender is the Flesh and The Troop) and I couldn’t decorativeness them, oregon truly get started, due to the fact that that’s conscionable not thing I bask reading. But they’re fashionable fearfulness novels, truthful it doesn’t astonishment maine that they ended up connected the list.