How to Get the Best Book Recommendations
Algorithms are pretty sophisticated today.
Learn how you can you can use them to your advantage…
Introduction
I usually shop online for books.
That wasn’t always the case.
I used to go to the bookstore, help the local business. I always found something new and fascinating there. Unlike online, where I always got recommended the latest bestsellers.
Ugh… Horrible.
And boring.
The same recommendations…
Since I always got recommended the current bestsellers anyway and everyone was talking about them online, I wasn’t exposed to new ideas.
That was the big flaw.
I wanted to learn something new, but seeing John Strelecky’s The Big Five for Life every other day wasn’t helping at all. How can I get new recommendations of more fascinating books?
So I did something to trick the algorithm…
By the time it was the Christmas, my purchasing behavior has changed.
Getting better book recommendations
I love videos like this one:
Just a lot of books to immerse myself into the wonders of math and science. While a lot of his book recommendations are very old books — out of print, hard to get — there are some which can still be bought at a reasonable price.
But many which are still available too.
So I just bought them.
Never knew if I was going to read them completely.
Just knew that books like these are what I want to spend my time on.
Algorithms…learn!
It’s fascinating how sometimes algorithms know our preferences better than other people do.
I bought them on Amazon for several reasons:
- Have a better overview of what books I already own:
If there was a book I’d already have in my library, it would most probably be not recommended to me (again) and I could see that I already own it, so I won’t buy it again. Saves me some money, since I have bought books twice in the past. - Adapt the algorithm:
This is what this whole article is about.
Today I get recommended a lot of gems that I did not see elsewhere — meaning, that I did not see recommended somewhere else before.
And the more I browse within my recommendations, the more recommendations I get. It’s a win.
Get out of your bubble
I often propagate the idea of a personal vision of ourselves:
An image of a person who we want to be.
But you have to act like that person today.
What would that person do?
By purchasing books the vision of yourself would read, you fill your own library with new ideas and change your environment accordingly. This will help you to become the version of yourself that you want to become.
Of course, now you only have to read them.
But that’s another story…
