The Speculist

Finding the Perfect Book

Via KurzweilAI.net, Amazon today launches a full-text search feature for 120,000 books, more than 3.3 million pages of text. The future has arrived, folks. Searching for the perfect book just got a whole lot easier.

Go to Amazon and read about the prizes they're giving for the best search experiences. They give examples showing the books you find when you do a search like "rocket experiments for kids."

I thought I would give it a try, doing a search that would yield a particular book by looking for an obscure phrase within it. I tried to find Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land using the phrase "water brother." (In the book, becoming "water brothers" is an important aspect of Martian religion.) A search on the words water brother produced some 64,000 results. I guess this means that more than half the books available for search have both the words "water" and "brother" in them.

Interesting, but not all that helpful. I added quotes and searched for the phrase "water brother," which narrowed the list down to 60 results. This was a bit of an improvement, but Stranger in a Stranger Land was not one of the 60. Unfazed, I decided to do a search on the word "grok." In the book, grokking is another key aspect of Martian spirituality. Heinlein introduced the word to the English language. At one time, it was unique to his novel.

Well, not any more. My Amazon search for grok yielded 188 books. What a legacy for Heinlein! His word has definitely made it into the language. Unfortunately, Stranger in a Strange Land was not one of the 188. Here are a few examples of books that the search did find:

That's a pretty neat collection of books, but still no luck getting to a book that I could have found in a few seconds by doing a straightforward search on the title. I decided to give it one last go: "Valentine Michael Smith". In the book, that's the Man from Mars' name

No luck. I got 11 items, each of which mentions SiaSL, but no pointer to the novel itself. Anyway, just to get it out of my system , here's the book I was looking for:

But enough of my manipulation of the system. Let's use this Amazon full-text feature the way it was meant to be used. Let's find books that contain text that we're interested in. As a service to my readers, here are a few books that contain ideas that are important to me.

A search for "fabulous monkey" gave me this title:

A search for "snot sandwich" yields this book:

If, like me, you enjoy reading books that include the phrase "wet glistening buttocks," then you'll probably be interested in this one:

How about something for the kids? I bet your family enjoys books about "frustrated squirrels" as much as mine does:

A good Halloween story allows includes a "gleeful fiend"or two:

Like a good mystery? Heck, who doesn't. Amazon can point you to 830 books in which "shots rang out" and 84 books in which both "shots rang out" and "dogs barked." If you want a book featuring a guy named Max in which both "shots rang out" and "dogs barked," Amazon has 27 titles for you. If you want a book featuring a guy named Max and a gal named Lucy in which both "shots rang out" and "dogs barked," there are four to choose from.

But let's get creative, here. Let's shoot the moon and look for the perfect book. I want a book in which "shots rang out" and "dogs barked," a book that also has a monkey in it, along with a fiend and some buttocks and a squirrel. Thanks to Amazon and their advanced full-text search feature, I have located this, the perfect book:

And now for the ironic twist: I'm actually a Harry Turtledove fan! And here I was just trying to be a wise guy. I even mentioned one of Turtledove's books in a recent entry. This one sounds pretty interesting, too. I might just have to buy it.

Anyhow, don't take my word for any of this. Go try the new Amazon full-text search feature for yourself. You might find the perfect book after all.

Posted by Phil at October 24, 2003 08:25 AM | TrackBack