- Shepherd For Readers
- Posts
- Shepherd-10 fantastic book lists for July!
Shepherd-10 fantastic book lists for July!
Ben Fox
July 07, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 17 minutes
What's new for July?
My 10 favorite book lists for July!
Traffic + top 3 business updates...
What am I reading/doing?
My 10 favorite book lists for July!
I’m a Canadian writer born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. My first book, A Nice Place to Die, introduces Police Service of Northern Ireland detectives DS Ryan McBride and his partner DS Billy Lamont. In 2019, A Nice Place to Die won the RWA Daphne du Maurier Award for Mainstream Mystery and Suspense, and in 2021 was shortlisted in the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence. I’m a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and BCAD, University of Ulster. I love atmospheric murder mysteries with complex characters and a great sense of place.
My interest in ignorance and uncertainty was sparked when I was an undergraduate mathematics student. I was taking my first courses in probability and then reading about Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, realizing that even mathematics contains untamed unknowns. Later, as a PhD student in sociology I read theories about how knowledge is socially constructed, the foundation of the “sociology of knowledge”. I wondered why there wasn’t also a “sociology of ignorance”. That ignited my interest, and the social construction of ignorance became my life-long research topic.
I am a historian and a professor of political management at George Washington University, and I became interested in the John Birch Society when I encountered the group while writing my first book, on Ronald Reagan's 1966 California governor's campaign. I'm also fascinated by debates about political extremism in modern America including such questions as: how does the culture define extremism in a given moment? How does the meaning of extremism shift over time? And how do extremists sometimes become mainstream within the context of American politics? These were some of the puzzles that motivated me to write Birchers.
My fascination with the brain began when I was an undergraduate, and since has grown into an insatiable curiosity about all things neuroscience. Today my main job is teaching courses in the health sciences at The Pennsylvania State University, but I spend much of my free time trying to find ways to make neuroscience understandable to those who share my enthusiasm for learning about it. I mostly do this through my books and a series of short neuroscience videos on my YouTube channel: Neuroscientifically Challenged.
When you grow up believing in magic, you inevitably face a moment when the world invites you to stop. Books are the reason to keep believing. Fantasy novels specifically give their readers magic to dive into and savor. What makes these fantasy novels so important to me is that they don’t just tell stories about magic, they tell their stories with such verve, such daring, such commitment to achieving the impossible, that they make magic. Reading these books, you will hold your breath, unable to believe that what feels like it’s about to happen could possibly happen when you turn the page... but don’t worry. It will.
As a journalist, I write about women and power. I’ve written about everything from taboos in women’s health, to the importance of reproductive autonomy, to the ability of women athletes to shape culture. Across all of these subjects, my work is rooted in the desire to explore the factors that drive gender inequity and how we can create lasting cultural changes that will close the gap. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in writing over 2,500 stories, it’s that gender inequity—from the pay gap, to the motherhood penalty—always comes back to power. And to one group’s desire to keep it at all costs.
As a kid I loved space, and devoured science fiction (Doctor Who was my favorite). Now I’m a grown-up, I write books for kids - 70 so far and counting. (My latest picture book is called Sometimes I Am Furious, illustrated by Joe Berger.) The Book of Blast Off! is my second book about space (the first one was just called Space – not the most imaginative title, it’s true). I love writing non-fiction for kids because, unlike grown-ups, you can’t blind them with science. You have to know what you’re talking about so you can explain things clearly. They’re the best audience and you want to be worthy of them.
I am a British crime writer with a love of American crime fiction, particularly books with dark plots and quirky, unique characters. I am the author of the Sunday Times bestselling, multiple award-winning, Washington Poe series and the new Ben Koenig series but am first a reader—I read over a hundred books a year. I love discovering a new-to-me series that has a back catalogue for me to work through, and I appreciate recommendations. I’ve been a full-time author since 2015 and, as I suspected, it’s my dream job.
I’m secretly eight years old inside. I love fascinating animal and science stuff, especially cool, weird, and gross facts. Readers of my children’s books see this passion in action. My best-selling and award-winning nonfiction animal books have sold more than 3 million copies worldwide since 2000. I focus particularly on reaching reluctant, struggling, and English-language-learning readers by packing my books with lots of action and high-interest topics to keep them turning pages. I’m recommending these top-five narrative nonfiction animal books for adults because these authors have influenced my research and thinking—and because they’re terrific stories!
My background is in computer science, specifically artificial intelligence. As a student, I was most interested in how our knowledge of the human brain could inform AI and vice versa. As such, I read as much neuroscience and psychology as I could and spent a lot of time thinking about how our minds create reality out of our senses. I always appreciate a novel that explores the fluidity of reality.
And here are 3 random bookshelves you might be interested in!
Traffic + business updates
For June, we had 419,000+ visitors and 560,000+ pageviews. That is up 319% over the previous year.
Traffic from Google was flat in June. That is part of the process, but always a bit frustrating (as search traffic has been flat since January).
For a big-picture perspective:
In 2022 we had 1.8 million visitors.
In 2023 we've already had 2.5 million visitors (through June)! Woohoo!
My goal for 2023 is to reach one million monthly visitors.
Top 3 business updates
#1 - What are we doing in July?
New front page!
Improving search massively (adding genre/age data as well)
Integrating genre/age into other parts of the website.
Here is what the new front page is going to look like...
#2 - Improving the "books like" UX and results
I've been working to improve the books-like page (for an example of the current page, try books like "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold").
What do I want to improve?
I want to show why each book was picked as being "like" that book. This is something readers have requested and that I want. I want to show how humans connected this book to the other (or if we don't have human data, explain how the algo worked).
I want to add filters so that readers can filter the books to see only books within certain genres/topics. If I loved Dune because it is classic science fiction, I could limit the results to only classic science fiction that Dune fans recommend.
I want to improve the quality of the results. Now that we have genres/ages, we will use those to improve the results. And I want to do more to show the most recommended books alongside that one. For example, if Project Hail Mary is recommended alongside Dune more than any other book, I want to show it first.
Here is what we are playing with:
I’ve done 20+ random video tests with users to figure out a design that clearly explains why the books are connected and is not confusing. I still need to play more with it, but we are finally getting somewhere.
And here is the opening we are playing with:
#3 - Topic and genre accuracy + ChatGPT.
Shepherd has an internal mess as many things we call genres are topics, and vice versa.
The book industry is an utter mess when it comes to data. I am currently stuck using the book industry's data, but I would like to improve it later this year.
Why is this data such a mess?
I don't understand it, but the publishers don't know how to implement this data, don't spend time making sure it is correct, and some abuse it.
I've seen editions of Dune that say it is published in the 1700s and others in the 1800s. If you see that level of mistake on a book selling hundreds of thousands of copies each year, you can guess how bad other books are.
Or, a book like Good Omens is marked as science fiction by the publisher, or a fiction book is marked as being about A.I., automatically classifying it as nonfiction (so then it is marked both fiction and nonfiction).
And one of the most frustrating things is that publishers try to slip marketing crap into the book description so that instead of a clean book description, you have quotes from newspapers, award mentions, and other spammy stuff (weird characters as well as they try to make stars or award icons).
Nobody is checking this data or teaching publishers how to use it properly.
This makes sense, as the book industry has no idea what to do with the internet or how to build an online book ecosystem.
Instead, companies like Nielsen, Ingram, and Bowker sell access to this database but have no incentive to improve it. And they make it so expensive that almost no one can afford to use this data to make cool apps or websites for readers (which would also help authors/publishers).
It feels like I am watching someone sitting in a pot of water, and it is slowly getting hotter and hotter. They sit there doing the same thing they did for the last twenty years ago and refuse to change.
(Note, I am venting some frustration, and I could be wrong, but this is my read on the situation as of June 30th, 2023. )
What can I do to fix this data?
This is incredibly hard to fix.
For example, with Good Omens being assigned to Science Fiction, how do you fix that? How do you even know if it is incorrect if you haven't personally read that book?
We currently have 30,000+ books in our database; any fix requires a scaled solution.
One option is to crowdsource improvements.
The idea is that website users can improve the data about books (both readers and authors). They could suggest a book's genre, fix errors from the publisher's data, and make other suggestions.
Then I would need to build something to review those submissions, approve them and ensure the system works correctly. This is hard to get right.
This is what Goodreads does; they have a large team of volunteers. It is also what Story Graph is doing on a smaller scale.
Another option is to use artificial intelligence…
We use the fantastic Wikifier project to identify Wikipedia topics in a book.
This project uses Natural Language Processing from data we give it about the book to identify topics. It isn't perfect, but it scales very well. It struggles with fiction as that is harder for it to make topical connections with.
I am looking to switch this process to ChatGPT as, in early tests, it is a bit better (although there are a lot of A.I. hallucination problems).
I could also use ChatGPT to improve each book's genre data when we make this switch. I've been playing with this for a few months… and I think ChatGPT might be able to do this in six months.
It will still require much work, but this could significantly improve genre and topic accuracy. I'll share more as I get more time to test.
What am I reading?
Babel by R. F. Kulang - I love it so far; a bit of historical fiction mixed with a slightly different version of the 1800s (with a bit of magic thrown in).
If you love crime fiction, check out Brian Klinborg’s Inspector Lu Fei series, it is fantastic; I read all three books last week. Book three was the best yet, and I look forward to the next one. I found it on his list of the best books about international crime, both fiction and nonfiction.
Savage Peace - I need to finish this one, put it down, and haven’t picked it up in a while, even though I love it. It is about the year right after WW1.
What have I been up to?
As of last week, my son has officially graduated 1st grade. Unfortunately, he was sick and missed the last day of school.
Now that he is out, we drove to rural France for a month-long family vacation. I am super excited and looking forward to more time with my wife and son, reading, and biking.
Have a great July, and enjoy summer (at least for the Northern Hemisphereians)...
Ben
P.S. From a glorious bike ride today in rural France.
Can you help me create a better book website for readers?
Would you join our Founding Member program?
An anonymous supporter is matching everything we raise this month, so if the time is right, it means your membership counts 2x this month!
For $49 dollars a year, you keep us independent and creating the book website that readers and authors deserve.
This is hugely important as I am currently funding this with my savings, and I need your financial support (if able).
We have special perks for readers who join (and more coming). Add free browsing is coming with user accounts soon! Plus you can take part in the upcoming "best 3 reads of the year" alongside authors!
100% of your membership goes toward new features (Ben works for free).
Ben will work incredibly hard for you and echo your name through the ages!
Hit reply and ask me anything.
Reply