Book Networks

The network graphs below show an individual book's similarity network. Books are deemed "similar" based on Goodread's "Similar Books" page for a book. For example, you can see that Abundance by Ezra Klein is similar to other books like Karen Hao's Empire of AI and Dan Wang's Breakneck. These similarity measures are based on Goodreads user behavior: users who read Abundance also read Empire of AI and Breakneck. This may not be the best way to measure similarity, but it provides for access to a very wide and broad book network that we otherwise wouldn't have access to.

As these are the networks for an individual book, the only book that are included are the following (using Abundance as an example):

• books that have Abundance on their "Similar Books" page
• books that are included on Abundance's "Similar Books" page

Further, the edges (connections) are drawn whenever applicable. Naturally, all the books in Abundance's network will have a connection to it; further, some books, like Empire of AI and In This Economy?, have each other on their "Similar Books" page, so a connection is drawn between them as well. You'll often notice a large cluster of nodes/books all beside each other. These are books that only have a connection to Abundance, but no one else in Abundance's network.

The Louvain method is used for community detection and node coloring. Node and label sizing are based on a node's degree (number of "similar" books). Cutoffs for inclusion based on Goodreads counts were made in order to reduce the node/edge counts. The node sorting will automatically begin and stop after about thirty seconds. You can click the "Play" button to continue the animation.

source: Goodreads "Similar Books"