Off the Agenda
Search
Off the Agenda

Off the Agenda: Conversations for Building Church Leaders

May 11, 2009

What Isn't On Your Bookshelf?

A playful exercise in what books say about us.

Books.jpg

The UnSuggester. It isn't new, but a few months ago, I stumbled across this entertaining feature at LibraryThing, a website where people can list the books they've read and connect with other readers. The UnSuggester is a search engine where you enter a book, theoretically one that you own or have read, and are given a list of books that are least likely to be right for you.

The results are based on which books are missing from the collections of LibraryThing users who have the book you give. It doesn't always seem to work, and I'm not sure how scientific it is, but it makes for a fun game, seeing which book tops the list of "unsuggestions" for a particular title. Here are some of the better pairs that I found:

My Life by Bill Clinton Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper
Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen Dune by Frank Herbert
Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella
Paradise Lost by John Milton Mason-Dixon Knitting: The Curious Knitters' Guide by Kay Gardiner
Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

Give it a try. Can you generate any better pairs than these?

Tim%20Byline%20Pic%20cropped.jpg
Tim Avery is the associate editor of BuildingChurchLeaders.com.

Posted by Tim Avery at 11:20 AM on May 11, 2009 | Comments (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Tags used in this post:

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.christianitytoday.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2767

Comments

Don't waste your life reading about Bill Clinton's life! haha!

I have read Shopaholic Takes Manhattan (blush, don't recommend), and would very much like to read Orthodoxy by Chesterton.

Apparently, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen ≠ The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun

This is fun, thanks!

Post a comment

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember This?

Verification (needed to reduce spam):