Show HN: Personalized book recommendations with Librarian AI

by delta234 • 3 years ago

150 102 3 years ago

bepcyc2• 3 years ago

Probably a great project, but I couldn't use it as it shows me all book titles in German. Obviously it is based on my IP address. But I'm not a German speaker, so I'd like to control this behavior.

PurpleRamen• 3 years ago

Maybe change your browser language-settings? I only get English recommendations, even when entering German titles.

bepcyc2• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, it seems that some modern websites, including Google, tend to prioritize IP address over user preferences when it comes to language selection. I've ensured that my browser language, preferred language, and Linux locale are all set to English, and I make a point to change any settings I find in German to English as well. Despite this, some websites still display content in German.

To further prove my my point, I've just connected to a Singapore VPN, refreshed the page, and all book titles switched to English. When I disconnected from the VPN and refreshed again, the titles reverted to German.

Fuzzwah• 3 years ago

The problem I found with this (and many other recommendation engines) is that I've read all of the suggestions.

It seems like it needs an option to thumbs up/down the responses so that the system can continue to hone in on books that are new to me.

null_object• 3 years ago

The problem I found with this (and many other recommendation engines) is that I've read all of the suggestions.

Immediately had the same experience: input a Theroux, Bill Bryson and Bruce Chatwin into the engine, as I've been longing for some new travel books to read, but naturally it just gave me... five or six other books by Paul Theroux and Bill Bryson.

Definitely needs more input parameters to be useful.

ludovicianul2• 3 years ago

What will be the difference between this and asking ChatGPT directly for recommendations, providing the books you liked? Unless I'm missing something.

jackstraw14• 3 years ago

Reliability of ChatGPT GPT-4 isn't consistent in my experience. It seems to respond to prompts differently, but I'm not sure yet if it's based on the number of prompts in the last 8 hours or overall server load. I would guess that the API is more consistent than the ChatGPT frontend, but can't confirm for sure.

ailef• 3 years ago

You can tune the temperature parameter and bring it to 0 (if using the API). Although technically it's not fully deterministic, it will reply with the exact same answer >99% of the time in my experience.

(This is for GPT-3 and ChatGPT. Haven't tested GPT-4)

mijoharas• 3 years ago

Is this suffering from the HN hug of death right now? I'm getting "something went wrong" errors

bezbac• 3 years ago

It seems rather limited given you can only select 3 books

flir4• 3 years ago

If you've got the patience to feed all your books into librarything, the recommendations are incredible - for me virtually the whole first page are all books I've already read, but don't own.

I don't think its recommendation engine is anything sophisticated, it's just working with really really rich data.

whiplash4512• 3 years ago

Do we know which data it uses? Collaborative filtering or content/metadata?

flir4• 3 years ago

It's got 2.8m members who have entered 186m books that they own. It cross-references those collections in some way (I don't know anything about the internals).

I just checked, and it says it's recommending a book to me (Singularity Sky) based on five other books I own (Engine City, Spin State, A Deepness In The Sky, Recursion, The Skinner). But as it's always "based on these five books", I have to assume it's doing a lot more matching than that.

blowski• 3 years ago

I found that it recommended poor imitations of books I liked. I’d rather read the best in a range of genres than all the books in a specific genre.

flir4• 3 years ago

That is very interesting. I think most home libraries must go deep on a few genres, rather than selecting the best from many genres. I can absolutely see how it would fail for you.

slothtrop• 3 years ago

Personalized recommendation does not address that use-case. All you need to do is check reviews, lists and favorites among users on r/books or other platforms.

jonasmerlin2• 3 years ago

Psss. Please don't ruin Librarything by getting more people on there. Its recommendation algorithm is pure perfection—basically magic—and I fear it's mostly because it's only used by a very particular group of people.

metadaemon2• 3 years ago

ew gatekeeping.

Version4672• 3 years ago

Pretty solid recommendations. I picked a specific topic and chose three books that I've read about it and it recommended two other books that I have on my list, one that I have heard good things about but have decided against reading it and one that I haven't heard about and will check out.

Though as always, the problem with book recommendations is not that it's hard to find books about a specific topic, the problem is finding books that are a) good and b) different enough from other books I've read about a topic so as not to be very repetitive.

If this could solve a) I'd be very happy, though I cannot see how it would accomplish that. The best attempt at solving this for myself was just going by book recommendations from actual people, but even that is hit or miss. Many people recommend books about a topic on which they've only read that one book and so they don't actually have anything to compare their book to. A book recommendation like that doesn't contain information about how good a book is, just if the one who read it liked it.

So in my opinion this is actually a pretty difficult problem and I'm not sure throwing an llm at it (I'm assuming that's what the ai in the title refers to) will solve it.

Still, it's a neat project.

summarity• 3 years ago

If you want to compare books, I've got a project for that: https://findsight.ai I use it for my learning as a PM to skip over books that just copy & paste from each other.

A related project is https://shepherd.com - but it focuses on high quality human suggestions.

Version4672• 3 years ago

Thanks, I'll look into it.

MrThoughtful• 3 years ago

For author recommendations, there is also Gnooks AI:

https://www.gnooks.com

The recommendations seem to get better with every author you rate.

greenie_beans• 3 years ago

wow actually this isn't bad

frozencell• 3 years ago

Does this exist but for web content? ie. Enter an URL of an article, tweet, video... and get in output recommendations related to the content

dewey• 3 years ago

Have you considered a Goodreads importer? They let you export data as a CSV file.

https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/How-do-I-import-or-expo...

tasubotadas• 3 years ago

How it's implemented? What's the underlying approach?

sirius87• 3 years ago

One of 3 books selected ended being served up as a recommendation. Seems like low hanging fruit to filter it out.

EDIT: The recommendations still feel less like AI and more like k-means clustering.

jetrink• 3 years ago

Similarly, the top two suggestions for me were both sequels to books that I had selected.

Interestingly, I asked ChatGPT for recommendations based on the same list and it gave me a very similar result, including matching the top two suggestions! Coincidence? (I added a note that I was interested in finding new authors and it gave me a much better list.)

FredPret• 3 years ago

Love this. I put my three favourite books, and got out two recommendations that I already read and loved, and two ones that appear to be likely new favourites

DrNosferatu• 3 years ago

Is it a classical recommendation method?

What's the underlying algorithm?

A veteran for movie recommendations: https://movielens.org/

whiplash4512• 3 years ago

It’s a shame the page does not explain which algo is being used.

panosfilianos• 3 years ago

I wonder if anyone has managed to prompt GPT for suggestions like these.

ludovicianul2• 3 years ago

I prompted ChatGPT with the same input and got 4 out of 5 books the same as the ones recommended by the app.

amitlevy49• 3 years ago

It's decent, but GPT-4 recommendations are better, I had to go multiple iterations of books before it recommended one I didn't read and love already

mdp20213• 3 years ago

GPT-4 recommendations are better

And how would that work?

Is it like "Given preference for A, B and C, suggest more"? One would like to understand what makes (specifically to this task) such box a good engine.

KaoruAoiShiho• 3 years ago

What prompt are you using?

rpastuszak• 3 years ago

Have to considered using referral links for some of the recommended books?

I don't think that everything needs to be monetised. On the contrary - there's too much stuff existing merely to just extract value from users. But, the recommendations I've seen here look really good and I'm already ordering one of the books (the other one I've already bought).

k_eshav• 3 years ago

It's great, although would love to know how it's built.

kilroy123• 3 years ago

Only 3 books? It only suggested other books I've already read. It seems very limited.

moolcool3• 3 years ago

How is it supposed to know what you've read?

psiops• 3 years ago

By allowing for a list of read books to be entered.

LesZedCB• 3 years ago

Goodreads integration

sib• 3 years ago

Or even let me click a button on its recommendations ("I've read this [and I liked it]" or "I've read this [and I didn't like it]")

karlkloss• 3 years ago

Not really. Nearly all of the books it recommends I already know and don't like, rsp. I don't like the author's style.

mysterydip• 3 years ago

I'm interested in old game programming books. I put in three that I have, and I got a couple modern programming book recommendations. Is there a way to add consideration for age of material?

imperistan• 3 years ago

selected three books that I love, two out of three recommended books are childrens books. Weird.. My selected books obviously were not childrens books. Maybe because I selected Dutch books?

iammjm• 3 years ago

Infinite Jest, 1984 and Moveable Feast return Catcher in the Rye, Sun Also Rises, Gravity's Rainbow and Slaughterhause-Five. These are very basic recommendations. Not great

andrepd• 3 years ago

Every /r/books post ever, basically x)

moolcool3• 3 years ago

Your input was kinda basic too though, TBH.

adammarples• 3 years ago

I don't know what you expect to be recommended given the inputs

PretzelPirate• 3 years ago

I found that it recommended the same books that I'd get from any non-AI-powered site when I say I like "Three Body Problem", "Brave New World", and "Dune". What I'd really like is for it to help me find books I wouldn't think to try reading by asking me questions about what I enjoy in life and topics I find interesting.

mdp20213• 3 years ago

that I'd get from any non-AI-powered site

And in which other sites you input a list of books and get a list of recommendations?

Like this one: anonymously, directly?

justinpombrio• 3 years ago

Lots of book sites have recommendations. E.g. "Readers also enjoyed" on Goodreads and "People who bought this also bought" on Amazon.

They're anonymous-ish (in that you don't have to be logged on, though I'm sure tracking cookies gunna track), and they're direct, but they're only for one book at a time.

bwb7• 3 years ago

Can I get your thoughts on https://shepherd.com/? Working on it and going to add genres and filters soon.

themodelplumber2• 3 years ago

I just tried it. The look and feel is really nice. The topical search was helpful. Bookshelves are a cool idea and "lists we think you will like" in the footer was helpful when I found a list that was OK but with books that were too academic for my interests in a topic.

Book Title search seemed like it could use some kind of "not found, but..." Helper, or suggestion functionality.

I searched "Moscow Calling," "Remembered Prisoners of a Forgotten War," and "Nixon at the Movies" with no title results. Huckleberry Finn worked OK.

Would use it again though, thanks for dropping a link in the discussion.

acjacobson4• 3 years ago

I'm echoing my other comment a little bit but I've been following Shepherd and thought I would comment since you're here. I like a lot of your ideas but I haven't quite managed to get recommendations that consistently sound interesting. I think it has something to do with authors and it would be interesting to know how you're thinking about how authors or writing styles are related.

For example, I like Bill Bryon and have read most everything he has written. He's good at making subjects I am not interested in captivating. For example medical history and anatomy in his book The Body.

I would love to read other books that make the uninteresting interesting but when I put The Body into Shepherd (or most recommendation engines) I mainly get other books about anatomy. This makes sense on the surface, but I've already read a book on anatomy. I'm ready for something else interesting.

I realize that might not be very actionable or useful, but when I am looking for something new to read I don't know what I am looking for. I just know the "vibes" books and authors I like, and often find that recommenders default to similar subjects only. Maybe this is difficult or impossible to capture, but it's been nagging me as something missing.

malshe2• 3 years ago

I want to read more books like "Financial Shenanigans, Fourth Edition: How to Detect Accounting Gimmicks and Fraud in Financial Reports". However, neither the book nor the first author are listed in your database. I couldn't find any narrow topic to match either.

https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Shenanigans-Fourth-Accounti...

ethanbond• 3 years ago

Just used this successfully to find a book about olfaction, which I've been looking for and asking around for for a while! Thanks for this service :)

costcofries• 3 years ago

It would be great if the AI knew what was on our respective bookshelves and then recommended new books based on that.

samcuse• 3 years ago

I played around with something similar to what you are talking about - take your Goodreads bookshelf, see what you've read and what you have marked as "to-read" and then make a recommendation based on that. It is not perfect by any means, but would love feedback!

https://goodreadsgpt.streamlit.app/

johnfn• 3 years ago

GPT4 is pretty good at this. Here's what I got on a first run, though you can keep prompting it to go more esoteric if you want. I honestly think that GPT4 will obsolete most existing recommendation systems; it's already better than what I previously used (Goodreads).

Prompt: give me some books similar to "Three Body Problem", "Brave New World", and "Dune" - but dont give me the common suggestions, give me some more esoteric stuff i probably haven't heard of
I understand that you're looking for lesser-known, yet thought-provoking science fiction novels similar to "Three Body Problem," "Brave New World," and "Dune." Here are some esoteric suggestions that you might not have heard of:
"Blindsight" by Peter Watts - This hard sci-fi novel explores the nature of consciousness and humanity's first contact with a terrifyingly alien intelligence.
"The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi - A post-human heist story set in a future Solar System, where advanced technology has given birth to an array of strange and wondrous societies.
"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin - A groundbreaking work of feminist science fiction that explores gender and societal norms on a planet where inhabitants can change their sex at will.
"The Stars My Destination" by Alfred Bester - A classic sci-fi novel that combines elements of revenge, teleportation, and corporate intrigue in a richly imagined future world.
"The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin - A thought-provoking tale of two societies, one anarchistic and the other capitalistic, and the physicist who attempts to bridge the divide between them.

soco• 3 years ago

I can vouch for the entire recommendations list (Blindsight or Quantum Thief series are my go-to answer when people say "what's your favorite book"), but I wouldn't really call them "lesser knowm" - they all won prestigious awards like Locus or Hugo.

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

Exactly, I want a new echo chamber

I can import the same echo chamber anywhere I go

I want to hop dimensions, we dont have a shared reality and are coddled with a familiar soma just like in brave new world

Honestly the best I’ve seen for this are website that just let you browse YouTube and social media sites under a different users session

DeathArrow• 3 years ago

I got: "Something went wrong, please try again later".

beepbooptheory• 3 years ago

I find that it just seems to pick the most well known author of the three and gives me back mostly just other books by them. Or otherwise doesn't seem to recommend based on the content or themes or historical context of the book, but broad current cultural patterns.

Like, I get that the type of guy who likes Infinite Jest would probably like the three James Joyce books recommended to me, but thats more of an Amazon recommendation than an informed AI one. Its also surely the case that an IJ fan is aware of Joyce already!

I tried to be more obscure and personalized: 2666 by Robert Bolaño, The Dissertation by RM Koster, and Notable American Women by Ben Marcus (which is a novel despite its title). I got back a David Foster Wallace book, another Bolaño book, a book of short stories that is maybe actually interesting but very different from my input, and a homemaking book about reducing waste in your home.

Kinda seems like a waste of energy hooking up AI to this, you could just scrape Goodreads and get the same quality output.

fedeb95• 3 years ago

3 favourite books is absurdly too few

yanis_t• 3 years ago

I wonder if there’s an AI that could deeply look into my data, and I have hundreds of read books along with reviews and ratings, and recommend me some real non-obvious books.

I tried asking chatgpt, but it’s too much data for it to digest. And from what it can digest it gives me some real obvious and generic recommendations.

carlosjobim2• 3 years ago

Important books missing: The Bible, The Quoran.

I think these will be the first books most people think of.

Your idea is great and I hope it works out. I could only get errors when trying.

For me, I don't need any more book recommendations. Once I started reading more a few years ago, each book referenced or even recommended other books, and I'm still riding that wave.

carlosjobim2• 3 years ago

I'm not the kind of person to question down votes, but really? Am I getting down voted for suggesting the two most read books of all time to be included?

moolcool3• 3 years ago

I read the title as "Libertarian AI" and thought "Oh great, it probably just recommends Atlas Shrugged"

tuesgloomsday• 3 years ago

gave some progression fantasy recommendations (basically high octane anime flavored action fantasy) and it gave me some historical fantasy (not the same genre) some fantasy romance (even further away) and emma by jane austen (????) doesn't seem to work.

bwb7• 3 years ago

What is the data source under this and what makes it AI?

mvidal01• 3 years ago

It recommended pretty unhelpful recommendations.

Searched for 1.The flute and flute-playing : in acoustical, technical, and artistic aspects, 2. An essay on the construction of flutes, giving a history and description of the most recent improvements, with an explanation of the principles of acoustics applicable to the manufacture of wind instruments 3. A treatise on the flute

It suggests Beauty and the Beast and Other Fairy Tales The Flower of Paradise Songs for Bass in a Comfortable Range Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police and The Flute Book (this is the only relevant result).

groby_b• 3 years ago

The recommendations have a heavy bias towards high-popularity books. That's... not extremely helpful.

I kind of expected that on my first sample set (Ishmael/Accelerando/A Gentleman in Moscow), but even the second one (Priory of the Orange Tree/Traci Lords:Beyond it all/Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins) is severely tilted to "everybody is reading it!"

A last try with a decided "60's Scifi" slant - Small, still voice of trumpets/The Tomorrow People/Deathworld. And I get Hitchhiker's Guide, War of the World's, Rainbows End.

I don't look for book recommendations to learn what everybody is reading, those books are inescapable anyways. I'm looking for thematically relevant, but might surprise and delight me.

Doing this well is hard even with curated lists and experts, but it's definitely possible to do better by just weighing popularity less heavily.

tokai• 3 years ago

It gave up finding me recommendations on the basis of The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra and The Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters. Both authors have made more works, so pretty weak.

themodelplumber2• 3 years ago

I got some interesting results from this that I wasn't expecting. I like that it found every title I searched.

Though the auto-complete kind of went off my phone screen, I knew I should scroll down to check.

Thanks for sharing it, will use again for sure.

agon123• 3 years ago

Thank you for making this!

I just found the botany of desire - next book I think.

acjacobson4• 3 years ago

It's a good one and if you enjoy it I can recommend most of Pollan's other books.

acjacobson4• 3 years ago

Promising idea (and a real unsolved problem for me) but at the moment I am getting the same as kind of recommendations others are experiencing. Mostly books I already know well or would see in other recommendation lists. Maybe three books isn't enough?

FWIW I've noticed I tend to gravitate more to authors than specific subjects, and finding a new author whose catalog I can mine is somewhat rare.

zie• 3 years ago

When I'm looking for a new book to read, I wander into the local public library and ask the librarian there. I'm rarely dissapointed.

Hlndrblt• 3 years ago

Love the idea. All online book recommendations I know about don't really work for me. That being said my first try with this site seems unsuccessful too. I entered Blood Meridian, Barbarian Days and The Cider House Rules. I got

The Road -> Same Author as Blood Meridian and I guess Mccarthys most mainstream successful book?

Barbarian Days -> ???

The World according to Garp -> Same author as Cider House

The Devil in the White City and The house on Mango Street are the two recommendations I don't know which also don't seem too obvious. But on first look both books don't appeal to me.

ESTheComposer• 3 years ago

Recommended me Hunger Games when I put my favorite books as (just to test it): "The Quran" "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" "Jupiter's Legacy Vol 1"

...so not too sure about it

DantesKite• 3 years ago

I tried it and it doesn't seem to recommend as many books as other book recommendation sites I use.

I prefer Readow.AI for instance because it recommends a lot more books, it's quicker, and the books it recommends are occasionally ones I've never heard of (and thus more valuable to me).

karaterobot• 3 years ago

I like that it asks me for books I like, that is a good start.

The thing that I was trained to do when I was a librarian, which I never see in recommendation engines, is to ask the question "what did you like about this book?", or "why did you like this book?", or any number of related questions that get to what you really want. Understandably, an algorithmic approach usually assumes the book is a single unit that is liked (or not) by others, and can thus be linked to other things people like on a fancy graph. This is useful because you don't need a granular understanding or human-level comprehension of the books. But, it tends to make for more generic, less interesting recommendations.

Sometimes the answers people give to these questions are really interesting: "there was one scene that really reminded me of a canoe trip I took with my dad" not just "the user wants [books with canoes]". At present, you need to be human to actually understand that it's not the canoe that matters, it's something else, and the right recommendation may be a book that appears completely different on the surface.

hammyhavoc2• 3 years ago

You sound like you made a phenomenal librarian.

pchangr• 3 years ago

Wow! I don’t know why I had actually never asked a librarian for recommendations.. seems so obvious now. I’ll do next time ^^

johnlbevan2• 3 years ago

Great point... On Sword and Laser (a book club/podcast) the idea of different types of reader is often discussed; i.e. what's the main driver behind liking a book:

  - Plot
  - World Building
  - Character
  - etc (There's a specific list mentioned, but I can't recall it)

That's the simpler classification side of things, so easier to code up... Your example of the canoe trip would be significanlty more complex; but definitely more a scenario worthy of AI over basic heuristics... and something that would need a conversation to drill down into (i.e. did the story evoke the scenery of their trip, or was it reflecting the relationship between the people, etc).

TopTheThaiGuy• 3 years ago

The recommendations were great! I have read all except one. Which mean that it really knows what kind of book I read as well. Can I ask if you use GPT api for this? or you used your own model. I'm also interested in the model where it can summarize book, index it and be able to fetch it later.

Thank you!

hekec• 3 years ago

A couple of weeks ago, I built an ChatGPT-powered recommendation engine for everything.

You begin by entering what you want to get recommended, and some examples of what you like and don’t like. After this it lets you swipe cards with suggestions to like/dislike them and further train the program.

https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/ai-suggester/id6447003073?l=en

Show HN: Personalized book recommendations with Librarian AI

Related Stories