I'm not sure this would come up on any algorithm?
Goodness knows I have seen some very weird 'if you bought/liked/read/threw this book across the room, you'll like X other book' suggestions (I may have mentioned, Goodreads actually recs books on the basis that I put Some Other Book on my 'Gave Up' shelf...)
But I'm really honestly not sure that any algorithm would go 'I see you have given My Family and Other Animals 5 stars; might we suggest The Alexandria Quartet?'
Chris Packham, 'The Books That Made Me'* in the Guardian Review: [O]ne book I failed to finish, the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. I’d read all of his brother’s stuff when I was a child, so I picked it up thinking this is going to be great, and I found it lamentable. I got very angry with myself - I never get rid of books, but it’s one of the few I’ve given away because I didn’t want to keep remembering it as the one that beat me.
Having actually made my way through the Alexandria Quartet (I was young, I had seen it praised, I think L Durrell's star was then in the ascendant. I have not read any of his later work.), I do boggle at the notion of someone who picked it up thinking it was going to be like younger bro's family hijinx with the animal creation on Corfu.
I'm trying to come up with similar mismatched expectations on the basis of relationship - or maybe even same person writing in different fields/genres?
*Aren't we all supposed to sympathise with John the savage in Brave New World?
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