R/Booksuggestions discussion

Have people here tried many of the books that Goodreads suggests based on their shelves? I'm somewhat dubious about how solid some of the recommendations are seeing as they only ever seem to be based on one book from the whole shelf. Have people had positive or negative experiences with the recommendations or do ye just ignore them for the most part?

Mostly the recommendations based on shelves are awful, i have no idea how they do it but they are almost in no way related. That's why I normally just use r/booksuggestions or the lists on goodreads.

I also tend to ignore the Goodreads recommendations; they tend to be a little all over the map. E.g.: Right now, due to my interest in "Classics", Goodreads is recommending I read Mrs. Piggle Wiggle or A Bear Called Paddington. While I have children's books on my Read shelf, I am not sure why every book Goodreads is suggesting I check out due to my interest in "Classics" falls into that age level. I find the lists more conducive to finding my next read, or I browse the Read shelves of other members with similar taste in order of their star rating.

I've found that the shelf recommendations are pretty terrible, but recommendations based on individual books are pretty decent (the ones that are on the right sidebar if you are looking at a specific title's page), especially compared to other websites.

Ever since Goodreads recommended me a child's picture book based off The Wasp Factory, I haven't really trusted their suggestions.

Ha! I just put all of my 5-star books on one shelf to see if it would improve recommendations if I asked goodreads to base them on only that shelf. Nope. It is basing all the recommendations on one book - The Brothers K. It is a novel with an underlying baseball theme. So what are they recommending? Non-fiction baseball books. Ridiculous. The Brothers K is about so much more than baseball that I don't even consider it a baseball book. Thanks goodreads!

Yeah, the shelf recommendations are pretty much completely useless. I can't remember the last time I actually found a relevant book through those.

Looking at the related books on the page of a book I like often works well, though. Kind of like the related videos on Youtube. I've found quite a few books I enjoyed that way.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree with everyone else here -- I don't really understand where they get their recs sometime. I really miss the system Amazon had ten years ago with recommendations, right now I just tend to stalk the favorite shelves of people that seem to love the same books I do.

right now I just tend to stalk the favorite shelves of people that seem to love the same books I do.


Yup, pretty much. This and browsing lists (not obviously bad ones, you can usually tell which ones are stupid popularity contests) has massively improved how easily I find books I actually enjoy.

Also, I practically use Goodreads like Youtube now. Once I'm done with a book, I immediately go and see which books are in the 'related' section for that book. I've found a handful of books this way as well.

I definitely use the lists of my favorite people and friends to add new books to my shelves. I have yet to find a recommendation from my Suggestions that I have added. The "related" books are another good strategy to find similar books in the genre. Great suggestion!

I never expected for people to unanimously be the same as mine... Nice.