Probably the last LT post for a while, but the recommendations feature just got augmented with a “Why?” link showing which books you own prompted the suggestion. It’s pretty neat. I seem to have hit basically two clusters: “Assigned for an English Lit. course” (The Great Gatsby, Dubliners, On the Road, Steppenwolf, Labyrinths, The Baron in the Trees, The Manuscript Found in Saragossa), and “Modern SF and post-singularity space opera” (many of these are on my wishlist not my shelves though).

A couple of interesting oddities show up. One book (Ian McDonald’s River of Gods) is the only motivation for six others (including some I’m not familiar with). Intriguing, but I can’t say much about why because this is one of my wishlist entries. It’s probably significant that it was only published in 2004 though.

Another interesting point is the overlap between the two categories. As I expected, the Huxley and Orwell bridge the gap (also Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, which I still haven’t read). They’re very consistently motivated by the same set: The Great Gatsby, On the Road, The Left Hand of Darkness, A Canticle for Leibowitz, and (this is the surprising bit) The Wind in the Willows. Who’da thunk it?