Culture
7 posts
The Best Recommendation Is No
The internet is great at telling you what to read and useless at telling you what not to. In an age of infinite books, the useful product says skip it.
The Books You Don't Log Matter Most
What you read, what you log, what you rate, and what you display are four different datasets. Recommendation systems only ever see the last one.
BookTok Is Building the Bestseller List It Already Controlled
TikTok now has an official bestseller chart, a curated summer list, and a checkout button. What happens when an algorithmic subculture joins the establishment.
Books Are Sexy Again. Reading Isn't.
Book mentions on dating profiles are climbing while daily reading has fallen 40% in twenty years. On the gap between owning, displaying, and finishing.
The Books Everyone Lies About Having Read
An honest verdict on ten famous books people pretend to have finished: which to fake guilt-free, which to half-read, and which actually earn the hours.
We Read the 10 Most Abandoned Books on Goodreads So You Don't Have To. Here's Where Everyone Quits, and Whether You Should Push Through.
Where readers actually quit ten infamous books, from A Little Life to Ulysses, plus our honest verdict on each: push through, or quit guilt-free.
The Bestseller List Tells You What Sold. We Wanted to Know What Was Being Read.
Why Siftivo is publishing a weekly Reading Index instead of yet another bestseller chart, and the gap between retail sales and reading culture.