Which books in this list will I "really like"?
138
15kṀ20k
resolved May 15
Resolved
N/A
21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Yuval Noah Harari)
Resolved
N/A
A Fire Upon the Deep (Vernor Vinge)
Resolved
N/A
A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin)
Resolved
N/A
Artemis (Andy Weir)
Resolved
N/A
Ball Lightning (Liu Cixin)
Resolved
NO
Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
Resolved
N/A
Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
Resolved
N/A
Eversion (Alastair Reynolds)
Resolved
N/A
Leviathan Wakes (James S.A. Corey)
Resolved
N/A
Midnight Riot (Ben Aaronovitch)
Resolved
N/A
On Basilisk Station (David Weber)
Resolved
N/A
Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft)
Resolved
NO
Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)
Resolved
NO
Stories of Your Life and Others (Ted Chiang)
Resolved
N/A
The Curse of Chalion (Lois McMaster Bujold)
Resolved
N/A
The Dresden Files (Jim Butcher)
Resolved
N/A
The Mote in Gods Eye (Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven)
Resolved
N/A
The One Who Eats Monsters (Casey Matthews)
Resolved
N/A
The Tale of Hodja Nasreddin: Disturber of the Peace (Leonid Solovyov)
Resolved
N/A
The Two Year Emperor (David K. Storrs)

I'm hoping Manifold can help me find (another) book that I'll really like!

In January, I started a bounty market with prizes for books I finished, "really liked", or loved. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky was the first book I "really liked" and won 2,000M. This is an unlinked market to predict which other entries will win at least that much.

Conditions to Resolve a Book YES

I've got a list of some books I've read, broken down into categories of how much I liked them. When I finish a book (or series*), I'll do a head-to-head comparison with the books on that list and give a gut-level "did I like it better?" vote. Given this information, I'll choose a category that I subjectively think it fits into. If it falls into the "Books I Really Liked" category (or higher), it will resolve as YES. Otherwise it resolves as NO.

It's worth pointing out that it took me a few books this year until I found one that I really liked - Three Body Problem, Permutation City, Small Gods, and Player of Games all came in as "okay" for me before Children of Time won the first 2,000M prize. Consider the base rate while trading!

If I don't get to a book by market close (1 year), it will resolve as N/A.

*Books that are part of a series will be evaluated as a series. That is to say, if book 1 of the series was just okay, but book 2 of the series was extremely good such that I feel the series as a whole is "really liked", then it would resolve YES. (Probably not important in practice, but this will short-circuit the moment I "really like" a series - even if later books make me think the series was bad, I will resolve YES after I finish a book that made me "really like" it, and I won't un-resolve to NO later)

Reading Order

I reserve the right to read the books in any order I want to, but I will generally use this schedule:

  • First priority is the book with the most unique traders.

  • Every fourth book I read will be chosen using a random number generator among all possibilities.

  • Every once in a while, I'll probably pick the book I'm most excited about reading next, though I'll try to do this more rarely (once or twice this year).

(You might wonder: why not read the book with the highest probability to really like? Because if I do that, it distorts this market - voting NO on a book will make it more likely to N/A, because it makes it less likely that I eventually get to reading it. Hopefully this algorithm gives incentive to find the true probabilities for each book.)


To get a sense of my reading speed based on the year so far, I apparently read 6 books in 10 weeks. You can use that for projections about which books in this market are likely to N/A.

Adding Options to the Market

I'd, of course, be delighted for more suggestions to add to this market. However, since y'all don't know which books I've read, it might be prudent to ask in the comments before you add an option. If I've already read the book, it will resolve as N/A. If you want to add one yourself without asking, do it at your own risk!

Some Notes on My Taste:

Fantasy and Science Fiction are my most-read genres, with a side of popular non-fiction.  I’ve done a write-up of some books I’ve read and what I thought about them in this doc

I’ve got a bad pattern with a lot of books that I’d ostensibly like where if they don’t grab my attention in approximately the first 20 minutes of reading I tend to lose steam and not come back to the book.  I’ve gotten lots of recommendations from friends for various books that I just don’t quite get started on (Lies of Locke Lamora, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, many others). So it's possible you'll want to lean towards things that start stronger, but then again maybe I'll push through slower starts because of the incentive in these markets!

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