Reading suggestions

John@SFSignal has written about the website What Should I Read Next which uses the tried and trusted "other people liked this so you might" method of suggesting new things to read.

I tried it with Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. The results were interesting, Vernor Vinger being the only SF writer on the list. Trying a similar search on StoryCode produced a completely different set of results and more to my liking. StoryCode use a more complex coding algorithm than just what other people bought, and for me at least it seems more accurate. I also checked Amazon to see what it said. Amazon UK suggests the entire Gibson back catalogue and one Bruce Sterling book! Whilst Amazon US suggests similar but with a dash of Neal Stephenson and Richard Morgan. Ho ho.

The problem with these services is that it depends entirely on the amount of data they have. More statistics should equal a better recommendation. In which case Amazon should be the most accurate, which it probably is, but it is also clearly the least varied.