Customers Who Bought This Item Did Not Buy
We can't remember where we first stumbled across the link, but we've been noodling around with LibraryThing's UnSuggester for the last day or so.
It's a simple concept: enter the title of a book, and the UnSuggester finds the titles least likely to be found in the same person's collection. Pretty much the opposite of Amazon's purchase suggestions.
We were hoping to find out what books didn't match some classic Seattle titles, but the UnSuggester's 75-book minimum makes that tricky. Not enough LibraryThing users own Skid Road, Sons of the Profits, Waxwings, or Monkey Food to find out what those readers aren't reading.
So we checked out Elliott Bay's bestseller list from last month. Of course: The Audacity of Hope. If you're a Barack Obama fan, you're not big on the classics, comic fantasy, or Stephen King. The top UnSuggestion is Canterbury Tales, with Sense and Sensibility, Fight Club, and The Lord of the Rings showing up in the top 10.
Then we had it: Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel that was the library's choice for the book everyone in Seattle should read this year. What don't Persepolis readers like? John Piper's Don't Waste Your LIfe, Gordon D. Fee's How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth, and John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Everyone in Seattle probably shouldn't read Dean Koontz, who had 11 titles show up on the Persepolis UnSuggest list.
