Show HN: What to read after? Personalised AI book recommendations | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: What to read after? Personalised AI book recommendations

whattoreadafter.xyz

31 pointsailibrarian27 comments

Personalised AI book recommendations with WOW effect! Greetings! I'm Robo Ratel, your personal AI librarian, and I'm thrilled to help you find your next amazing literary adventure! Just specify genres and/or storyline characteristic and see the exciting recommendations I've curated just for you!

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This is a neat idea, but I was really hoping I could type in a book title that I am currently reading and it would recommend “what to read after…” that book.

The title definitely implies that this is what you can do, I was definitely disappointed.

It turns out you can, but it's not intuitive. You can create an account, rate some books, then request a rec with all of the fields blank.

E1: Well, it worked the first time. Now the "AI Librarian" API call 403's out on me, according to my browser's web inspector.

E2: Oh, wait, you totally can do the "what to read after <X>" flow, you just have to click the "what to read after..." field in the top left.

This is the better URL to get there:https://whattoreadafter.xyz/

Hmmm, from the home page URL, I enter a book. I then click on the book, confirming that it's the one the app knows about.

It then shows me the same book, and a summary of it, and asks me if I want to read it.

Below that, it shows me a set of books in the "No Labels" category.

For all the books I've tried so far, it's given me this same set of books. House of Leaves is very different from A Time of Gifts, so it's unlikely that they're recommendations based on the book.

I haven't tried logging in, though.

I was expecting the same! It's literally in the name.

Not sure if this changed recently, but it does that for me. Search for a book (say xyz) and you can click on "Suggest me what to read after xyz" from that book page.

It does so for me, I searched for a book and then there was a button that says "Suggest me what to read after X" on top. Could be better UX but works fine at the time of writing this.

You can do it from the homepage https://whattoreadafter.xyz

Excellent!

After reading "A tour of C++," I can read: the same book twice again, the same book in Chinese, a book on the R language, or an English-German dictionary.

I know it’s not personalized since I didn’t create an account but it’s still a bit disappointing.

The privacy policy was a fun read though. They say that "one of our main priorities is the privacy of our visitors" and then give a huge list of the personal information that is collected. It’s not very private too.

Hey! Thanks for this comment. You probably have been expecting to see the recommendations directly in the dropdown after you typed a book title. I added some clarification message to remove misunderstanding: "Please be sure to type the book title into the text field above and then select the book from the dropdown menu. This will take you to the book's page, where you can discover what to read after"

If you do so, you can see this recommendation: Steven Edick Effective Modern C++ This book is a great follow-up to 'A Tour of C++' as it dives deeper into the modern features of C++, providing practical advice and guidelines for writing efficient and expressive code.

I got an empty red bar and, when I clicked on it, it said "error." This doesn't seem very personalized. I mostly read textbooks and the closest genre match is "nonfiction," which is pretty broad, and if that's all I get to select, I'm guessing you're going to show me puff-piece crap by ex Navy Seals and ultra endurance athletes that top the best seller lists. Not exactly what I'm looking for. Personalized implies it would recommend based on what you've read and enjoyed in the past.

Seems good. A few comments.

- Why is it called What to Read After? One doesn’t put an input book in.

- “Chick Lit” is probably not PC in this day and age.

- There are lots and lots of sections, but i can only choose one after the genre?

Chick lit is absolutely fine.

Disagree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_lit

> the term has fallen out of fashion with publishers,[2] while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism.

Hi! Thanks for your feedback!

- You can put a book title on the homepage https://whattoreadafter.xyz and see recommendations about what to read after.

- Sorry, what is wrong with "Chick Lit"? Chick lit is a term used to describe a type of popular fiction targeted at young women.

- yes, it's made on purpose to give you les broad recommendations. For example, you can look for horror, science fiction and fantasy with Christmas storyline. You can also make several searches, if you want to discover more books with different storyline elements.

It would be awesome to connect to Goodreads to see what a user has read and rated so as to not recommend things already read and to take those ratings into account

I like this but the site is such a baffling mess. Sometimes I can find the "what to read after x" function, sometimes not. Not possible after I've done one to do another. It's never clear what each screen intends to show there's just loads of random content across many screens with functionality popping up at random.

Thanks for the feedback! Some improvements are on the way! :)

Most of the books it recommended were extremely popular titles (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Martian, etc) and so out of the first 5 recommendations I got, I had already read 4 of them. This would be a lot more useful with a larger catalog.

I think there's a bit of overfitting in the output. If you put in a book in the middle of a series, it will sometimes recommend the predecessor.

I can only select 1 story attribute ( but multiple genres.) Is this intended?

Same here. I was only able to select one overall attribute. Not leading to a very helpful result. Probably something my adblocker is blocking. Oh well.

yes, it's made on purpose to give you les broad recommendations. For example, you can look for horror, science fiction and fantasy with Christmas storyline. You can also make several searches, if you want to discover more books with different storyline elements. Or you can skip this section to consider everything.

Oof, only way to login is sign in with google. No thanks. Nifty site none the less.

Other ways will be added soon

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