What book should I read next?

This is a question that many of us ask ourselves everyday. In the end, who do you turn to for an answer to that question? A Librarian? Or the computer algorithms of Amazon or Goodreads? This debate is the crux of the discussion in a recent article by Jessica Leber. In it she talks about Library book recommendation services that are springing up across the country. “[L]ibraians believe that human tastes and discretion are still relevant, even as automated algorithms are influencing an increasing portion of the media we consume…” Leber puts a book recommendation service, offered at the Brooklyn Public Library, to the test against Goodreads. In the end she suggests that the debate “… may be less about the method and more about the motive. One is commercial, the other is not.”

Where is your next book recommendation coming from?

Image credit: http://tinyurl.com/luxaknz, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0