If you’re a little freaked out by targetted marketing tactics such as Amazon.com’s “helpful suggestions” that are based on your previous search results, you should try the Unsuggester which “analyzes the thirteen million books LibraryThing members have recorded as owned or read, and comes back with books least likely to share a library with the book you suggest.” For instance, I typed in Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride, and the top book least likely to find its way into my library is John Piper’s The Passion of Jesus Christ : fifty reasons why He came to die. That seems about right… Confessions of a Shopaholic gets paired up with a sci-fi triology by Isaac Asminov, etc.
This article appears in May 10-16, 2007.