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Comment by gaelgthomas | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate your comment!

And you put the finger on something right here. As you describe, I didn't see it as: "If I'm sad, I want to listen to sad music".

When I built the app, I was really into that mindset of "How can this book help me when I'm in that mood?" (e.g., I'm feeling tired -> Suggesting "Why We Sleep" to fix your sleep and understand why sleeping is essential).

Somehow, I'm happy because what I wanted to do becomes clear when you use the website (based on what you described, which is 100% correct). But that also means I could have worked my "marketing/copies" differently to reflect that more.

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If "tired" recommends books about gaining energy, why does "lonely" not recommend books about meeting people?

Because reading book wont reduce your loneliness.

Is this statement always true?

It's possible for some people to feel more alone in groups, especially large groups, than it is for them to feel lonely while reading a book. Maybe one of the main reasons fiction is so appealing to some people is because it does, on a certain level, combat loneliness - some things seem easier to talk about in fiction than in real life.

You could forget about loneliness while reading a book, however it does not change fact that you reding it alone.

sure, but loneliness and being physically alone are arguably two totally separate things.

As an idea: why not make a filter for each mood, whether you want a book for that mood, or to "fix" that mood

to riff on that: two selectors: (current mood, desired mood) -> recommendations. desired mood could be sorted by most commonly selected desired mood for the selected current mood.

(sleepy, rested) -> nsdr playlist.

(sleepy, focused) -> Tony robins talk.

Book "Why we sleep" definitely wont improve my sleeping. It make it worse because it make you anxious from thinking about what terrible happening when you are not sleeping! In this condition it's really hard to fall asleep.

It seems like it'd be easier to just simply search by mood of the book, then allow the user to figure out how they want to leverage this to manage their own mood.

Trying to guess what the user actually needs or wants seems nearly impossibly difficult.

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