Via Neil Gaiman's blog, a delightfully tongue-in-cheek webtoy that turns product recommendation portals on their head. Tired of having books, movies, and music shoved under your nose by nosy computer algorithms?

Try the UnSuggester: when you choose a book or author it returns the inverse, titles you likely wouldn't enjoy based on your search entry. The UnSuggester is more useful than you'd think - consider how many bad holiday gifting choices you can avert if you know what books to avoid!

As an experiment, I entered Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine (a wonderful, phantastic fictionalized memoir inspired by Bradbury's childhood in 1920's Waukegan, Illinois) as as book I enjoy. Based on this selection, the UnSuggester predicts I wouldn't like these books; oddly enough they mainly deal with conservative Christian theology and knitting:

• The knitting experience : inspiration & instruction by Sally Melville
• When Christ comes : the beginning of the very best by Max Lucado
• Vogue Knitting on the Go: Socks Two
• Recovering biblical manhood and womanhood : A response to Evangelical feminism by John Piper
• Knitting on the road : sock patterns for the traveling knitter by Nancy Bush
• The five points of Calvinism : defined, defended, documented by David N. Steele
• A quest for godliness : the Puritan vision of the Christian life by J. I. Packer
• Mason-Dixon knitting : the curious knitters' guide : stories, patterns, advice, opinions, questions, answers, jokes, an by Kay Gardiner
• The master plan of evangelism by Robert Emerson Coleman

and...drumroll, please...

• I kissed dating goodbye by Joshua Harris

I haven't laughed this hard in days.

Labels: books, humor

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