DJALCHEMI

Sharing book recommendations

Based on my reading this year, I've added some more book recommendations to the Stuff We Like web site. This community site shares the tag-based 'folksonomy' approach of flickr and del.icio.us. It also shares the links to online retailers of some music playlisting services like Soundflavor or UpTo11.net — though Stuff We Like is not-for-profit and any commissions go to beneficiaries.

The site was initially launched last year as Books We Like, but last month the site extended from books to cover CDs and DVDs as well, though there are few recommendations yet for the latter. Unfortunately a few of the site features do not appear to work using either Safari or Firefox on a Mac (including the hyperlinks, as you can see in my recommendation of The Rose and the Briar, and the personal reading list compiled from others' recommendations).

At the time of writing there are 1,200 registered users, half of whom have made at least one recommendation. Unfortunately many of the recommendations do not have any comments to explain them, though Howard Rheingold has made some contributions — a literary form of the celebrity playlist — are typically informative.