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Watch This, Read That: A TasteKid Trial Run

Natalie Meyer

Staff Writer

Natalie Meyer quit her psychologist job to travel the world with her husband and a Kindle loaded with books. In her spare time, she can be found taking photos, reading, and writing about her , travel adventures.

If you are a reader, I’m sure you have books that you would love to see on the big screen. Whenever a movie based on a book is released, everyone and their brother has an opinion about which was better. I almost always fall firmly on the “the book was better than the movie” side of the fence. For that reason, I’m never super pumped that a book is being made into a movie. Instead, I seem to spend my time watching movies and TV shows and thinking “Man, I wish this was based on a book! I would read the crap out of that!”

There are a lot of websites where you can get book recommendations based on a book you like. There are a lot of websites where you can get movie recommendations based on a movie you like. TasteKid, on the other hand, provides movie recommendations based on books you like, book recommendations based on movies you like, video game recommendations, and song recommendations. Granted, it’s not always complete because users have to rate and suggest relationships. However, I was interested to see what books they would recommend for some of my favorite movies.

Office SpaceOffice Space – If you don’t know, Office Space is a movie about basically everyone who has a job they find pointless. It has a million catch phrases, hilarious characters, and the best gang-beat-down-of-a-printer scene ever. Tastekid recommended that I might enjoy Fight Club which might be considered somewhat similar, I guess. Inexplicably, it also recommended The Iliad, Ender’s Game, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I suppose they all feature male characters on some sort of “quest” but I fail to see how they are similar to Office Space.

 

lost-in-translationLost in Translation – This is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time and I sincerely hoped my trip around the world would be similar to this movie. TasteKid said that I might enjoy several Haruki Murakami books, which makes some sense since Lost in Translation is set in Tokyo and Marukami’s books are generally set in Japan. I was hoping for matches based on something more than setting, though. It also suggested the interestingly titled No One Belongs Here More Than You and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (a Marukami book I haven’t read) which I instantly added to my reading list based only on titles.

 

MSCLMy So-Called Life – Every woman my age loves MSCL and totally identifies with Angela Chase, right? TasteKid recommended A Visit from the Goon Squad which I loved but I don’t think it’s super similar to MSCL. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is quite similar, I think, so I’d consider that a good recommendation. Never Let Me Go is about kids raised in order to harvest their organs which I actually think is sort of similar to MSCL (unrequited love, being a teenager, figuring out your place in life, etc.). There are actually a lot of recommendations for this one that sound interesting to me (Me Talk Pretty One Day, It’s Kind of a Funny Story) so that’s great.

My overall impression is that Tastekid might give some interesting recommendations. However, they tend to be pretty similar. If one Marukami book is recommended, several of them are. I wish there was a way to say that you want books based on movie settings, or because of the love story, or because it’s funny, or whatever else you can think of but I’m sure that would take a lot of fancy analysis to complete. I’d love to hear what Tastekid recommends for some of your favorite movies or TV shows and whether you think those recommendations are accurate!

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