Duke Listens!: Visit my main blog at MusicMachinery.com

Steve points to a freakomendation thread on John Scalzi's blog: "Today Amazon suggested The Last Colony to me for purchase. Yeah, you know, I’ve read that. But it’s nice to know Amazon’s algorithm thinks I might like my own stuff." One interesting comment: Amazon’s algorithm also has an annoying (well, it was funny the first time, since it happened on April 1st. But then it kept on happening, and I realized they were serious) habit of treating writer’s names, without bothering to check if it’s the same writer or not. I bought a few of Sharon Lee’s and Steve Miller’s Liaden Universe books through Amazon. So they started to give me recommendation for other books by Steve Miller. Which would have been fine, except this new Steve Miller is a completely different Steve Miller and Amazon apparently thinks I would really like illustration advice books.

This is what happened with yesterday's Steve Martin freakomendation, where Amazon recommended a book by the wrong Steve Martin. LibraryThing, another book recommender, at least understands that there are two Steve Martin's that write books, but they still can't tell them apart. At the LibraryThing author page for Steve Martin there is this notice: Steve Martin is actually two authors, Steve Martin the comedian and author of Cruel Shoes, Kindly Lent By Their Owner: The Private Collection of Steve Martin, Shopgirl, Pure Drivel, WASP, The Pleasure of My Company, and Born Standing Up; and Steve Martin the author of Britain and the Slave Trade. In the future LibraryThing will be able to split authors with identical names. At present, it cannot.

This makes be appreciate MusicBrainz so much more. MusicBrainz knows all about the various ambiguous artist names and can tell them apart. I guess there's no such thing as BookBrainz yet.