Can data and AI
help me find better books?
Prompted by an article that’s somehow
the most popular content on this whole site
The origin
This throwaway blog post riffing on an article by Janan Ganesh proved to be one of the most popular things on the blog in 2024. It prompted me to dump out my Goodreads data and spend dozens of hours fighting with LLMs and charts to figure out if he’s right.
The Rules of Reading
Here’s the original post, where I agree and disagree with Ganesh’s article in FT (includes an archive link to his original piece).
Part one
Mostly preamble with jokes. I hit my Excel knowledge limit pretty quickly, but managed to find some good help.
Part two
Using AI to make charts, and testing some theses. I get some early conclusions on Ganesh’s recommendations
Part three
I disagree with my own conclusions, and crank out some half-baked theories about why I’m going to continue doing things my way.
