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Literature and movie maps
What else do fans of Amelie Nothomb read? The closer the names are together, the more likely both a person likes both authors.
Enter your favorite author here. David Foster Wallace, whom I dislike, is closest to Don Delillo. Virginia Postrel is paired next to Ayn Rand and Arthur Conan Doyle. Here is Milton Friedman. No, I don't know the details of their data but it involves asking visitors.
The parent company offers similar services for music and movies. Fans of Eyes Wide Shut like these movies. Total Recall is linked, sadly, to Animal House.
Go ahead, waste your time with this, I said it was OK.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 29, 2006 at 07:09 AM in Books, Data Source, Film | Permalink
Comments
Note that if you look at Neal Stephenson, the author furthest from him in the top-left corner is "Neal Stevenson."
Incidentally, the two closest authors to Mr. Stevenson (sic) are Greg Bear and Greg Egan. I'm not familiar with their works, but given the length of their names (and the fact that they share the first four), one doesn't have to spell well to get their names right.
On a more serious note, is it weird that my favorite authors are distributed throughout of the grid, with very little clustering? Or perhaps it means that I have unconsciously picked one favorite author of each "type."
There, you've succeeded in wasting my time. Thanks. :)
Posted by: David G. at Jun 29, 2006 7:53:48 AM
If you enter "Shakespeare" "Sokrates" is returned.
No clue who this Sokrates fellow is.
Posted by: Dave at Jun 29, 2006 8:46:39 AM
Not only is Neal Stephenson there in two different places, Author C. Clarke is present three times, in completely different places. And, as David said, my favorite authors are also not clustered at all (in other words, my Literature Map would be completely different). And has the map changed since he looked at it, because for me Greg Bear is nowhere near "Neal Stevenson", and is instead next to Larry Niven, which I would probably agree with to a certain degree. And I realize that their humor styles are not the same, but how can Terry Prachett and Douglas Adams be one opposite sides of the map?
Posted by: tripp at Jun 29, 2006 9:07:21 AM
The spelling is certainly weird and inconsistent (Ian Macewan?). Still, it did pretty well for most of my suggestions (yes, you've succeeded in wasting my time too). On movies, Mulholland Drive showed things like "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" which, aside from a certain arthouse pretention, don't have a whole lot in common, but which I also like.
Anyone know where the data comes from? Google APIs? Amazon?
Posted by: tom s at Jun 29, 2006 9:13:07 AM
Start at gnod.com and select a topic (music, film, books) and it asks you to name three of your favorites. My guess is that it is building off of these entries, which accounts for the spelling variations (Skatalites, The Skatalites, Skattalites).
Odd, over on the side of The Skatalites map, sits Thelonius Monk paired off with Weird Al.
Posted by: MikeKP at Jun 29, 2006 10:12:15 AM
"Valdamir Nabokov" is closest to John Cowper Powys. John Norman is closest to Jean Genet, and no Proust at all! BTW, who is John Norman? Seems to have written a bunch of novels about "Gor", is he any good? Annie Lamott and Barbara Kingsolver are closest to Isabel Allende, hmmm. Proust has close sidekick Flaubert but everybody else is standoffish. Susan R. Matthews is closest to Patrick O'Brian, I've never heard of her either.
So, two possible new authors in 15 min., not bad.
Posted by: Russell L. Carter at Jun 29, 2006 11:33:24 AM
I read the first Gor book and it was a typical barbarian swordsman story with the sex a little more overt than usual. I have heard that as the series continued it became more bondage S&M than adventure story.
Posted by: bertram at Jun 29, 2006 12:51:12 PM
What a crock. This doesn't work/ make sense at all. As a test I typed in 'sleepless in seattle' only because I KNOW you've got mail is pretty much the exact same movie. And yet the 'closest' movie to it is 'bladerunner', 'lord of the rings', 'sixth sense', 'indiana jones' ... all action/ fantasy movies.
So then I clicked on Lord of the Rings and what do you see? Sleepless in Seattle flies out to the outer portion of the map. No consistency here at all.
-Brad
Posted by: Brad at Jun 29, 2006 4:30:44 PM
Brad - I just tried what you said and SinS was relatively close to LOTR when I clicked the latter.
(Does that make for more consistency or less?)
Posted by: tom s. at Jun 30, 2006 8:18:09 AM
Interesting. I wonder if the mappers have some fun at the expense of others' typos or ignorance.
I typed in "Graham Green" and the closest match was Erma Bombeck along with those one would expect.
"Graham Greene" shows her nowhere on the map.
Funny.
Posted by: Rich at Jun 30, 2006 10:20:04 AM
How is it possible that Nadine Gordimer and Peter Drucker are located very clost to one another in a literature map? There are still a few bugs left in the system, it seems.
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