Personalization algorithms are often helpful, but not without fail — buy a gift for a friend on Amazon and suddenly you feel like a stranger in your own account.
Qloo is an iOS app launched in November that believes better recommendations come from being more holistic. You add favorites across eight categories (movies, books, travel destinations, restaurants, etc.), each with subcategories, and the app makes cross-category recommendations. You can't have more than five favorites per subcategory — an attempt to keep the app's data high-quality. Your taste in music will influence your recommendations for brunch, and so on, creating a sort of Frankenstein monster of Foursquare, Netflix, Amazon and more.
See also: Man vs. Algorithm: When Media Companies Need a Human Touch
Personally, I found Taylor Swift's RED album to be excellent post-breakup, but a book, being more immersive by nature, would be even better — so I asked Qloo to pull from its growing database the books liked by people who like Taylor Swift. My guess was that Jane Austen, with her complicated love stories, would be on there somewhere — and it was, Pride and Prejudice, at number 7.
Which books make you feel like you're listening to a Taylor Swift song? Share in the comments.
While The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo can be described as a tale of feminist revenge, T-Swift's form of getting back is writing a song, such as "Better Than Revenge."
As Rap Genius annotations say, "Camilla may have Joe Jonas, but Taylor is out here totally embarrassing her via this song — and Camilla can’t beat that by being in a crappy movie."
Taylor Swift has two songs on the soundtrack to the film that coincides with this, the first book in Collins' uber-popular series.
Story lines from Swift's songs have little in common with Katniss, who find herself in a love triangle with two suitors, while Swift's protagonists are often vying for another girl's guy ("You Belong With Me").
Like the many characters of this book, T-Swift likes a good party -- see "22."
Both Swift and Fey have hometowns in Pennsylvania, and both claim they had an awkward childhood.
This book about a wife who goes missing has the permanence of Taylor's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together."
It's up for debate whether Hemingway's classic is truly optimistic, but Swift definitely is. With her fair share of critics, she says in "Ours":
"So don't you worry your pretty little mind / People throw rocks at things that shine."
Love can take you by surprise: "You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter," Swift sings in "Mine."
“It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors,” Eugenides writes in this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Swift knows regional exploration, you could say, "All Too Well":
"We're singing in a car getting lost upstate / The autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place / And I can picture it after all these days."
I'm not sure what's happening here -- perhaps listening to too many Taylor Swift songs inspires healthful consumption.
A story of fate and love lost and found, this novel runs along the same lines as "Back To December" and "Love Story."
Photo by Larry Busacca/TAS/Getty Images for TAS