>On the other hand, I cannot relate to female characters at all, and I often find their decisions and thoughts hard to understand. Somehow, I find male characters way more relatable and both of my favorite books have zero female characters in them. Can anyone relate?

I do not like particularly a lot of romance, rom-com heroines. But not liking to read about women characters or books written by women, it is a bias worth examining. Women are 50% of the world, and I think anybody of any gender who disclaims reading about, or things written by 50% one of the genders (whether their own or the other, or any variant) is missing voices, experiences.

And you know the meme "a girl not like other girls?" (Sadly there are quite a bit of girls not like other girls, not that they hang together), if that is your thing it is, but it is a quite narrow place to be.

Do check it, I think it is precisely what you want and it is very charming, but not sacharine... And feels very japanese (unlike for example Murakami) on the storytelling, all the scenes, even the context is japanese recent history.

You are describing so exactly The Miracles of the Namiya General Store by Keigo Higashino, that you probably already read it and just forgot to mention it, right?

> The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick — had never heard of this and would have never picked it up because of the low Goodreads rating

OK, some advice, and that is for goodreads, or amazon, or any place really. Unless you are really sure your taste matches exactly the average, mode, taste of the people rating in a certain place do not include or exclude books because of average rating. Take a look at the high ratings and low ratings, see which reviews strike you as more you.

Great you got great recs.

> It'll be interesting to me as I keep reading recommendations to see if I start encountering books that I think are just bad or whether the algorithm really can tell what "good for me" means!

Not just the algorithm, but the data the algorithm uses, which depends on the quality of questionnaire, but also on the quality of the reviewers which rated those metrics. I am somewhat dubious it will be reliable forever but I hope it keeps working for everybody who is happy with it.

>I don't give out 5 star ratings willy nilly.

Me neither, I understood. I did not like the Sparrow much (Mary Sue is kind of my main memory) and I would not get into the comet seekers. I would not have given you good recs! ( Though wild guess, if you do like sf, maybe you would like Connie Willis more serious books, maybe... though her only story about alien contact is a kind of a Christmas romp and very different in tone from those books).

>I absolutely loved most of them and the other couple I rated 3ish stars but could still tell why they would be recommended to me.

Just curious, which were the books?

>I think it’s really useful if you know what kinds of themes you like to read about - like, I told it that I like science fiction books about making first contact with aliens and historical fiction about natural scientists and literary fiction about sibling relationships and it’s recommended me all kinds of things that fit those categories or the overlaps between them.

My problem is not finding books on a theme, or who fit a trope, I can google, I can ask friends or in places like reddit, there are goodreads lists, there are goodreads similar books. my problem is splitting the good books with themes I like from the bad books with themes I like! Literary fiction about sibling relationships, that is fine, but the problem is know which are good and which are really not good, but what the book is about.

Try looking at shelf and see recommendations based on shelf by shelf. The more specialized a shelf is, the more rare books it has, the most likely the books it tries to recommend might be halfway interesting.

But sadly book recommendations is somehting no algorithm is good at, at least for me. People are really great at that, or some people are, for some genres and some specific other readers, but algorithms, no.

> I found from using StoryGraph that there are patterns in my taste based on these clue words.

I have tried to used storygraph but it is useless to me if it is slow or fast paced, humorous or nt (and you can tell a lot by blurb and cover) that does not tell me if it is is good or not. I like the eccentric shelves at good reads also.

> I also like to know nothing about the plot before I start a book, which I realize it’s not common.

That is a problem to select books you will like.

>For example, if I’m recommended a book by a friend, I would just add it to my huge TBR list on goodreads without a second thought.

I usually do that, and my friend's reviews and ratings and of those people I follow show up first and that is a really important filter for me.

>But if I go to add it on StoryGraph, and see it has some elements that I historically don’t enjoy, I know not to waste my time adding it to the pile. For me it’s very helpful.

Well, it can be important to prune TBR but not considering friend's recommendations because of some storygraph very vague words is not something which would work for me.

Like fiction fantasy adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

that can be many many different books, some excellent, some fast paced, some with ludicruous non mysteries, some very bad...

But OTOH if it was showing me all my friends average rating of it was 4.68 or 3.0 that would be atotally different thing.

YMMV, just interesting how different things work for different people.

>It’s so much easier to figure out what you’ll like based on how each book is tagged.

We are like opposites. I look at those tags and I find them completely useless. Tries to reduce a book to selecting a shampoo or something.

No reader is alone ever in liking, disliking tropes, or styles, or genres. There is a market for everything, and there is no book or style or trope which is to the taste of all readers.

"Am I alone at X"? No. Whatever X is.

> I've read that a good alternative to abe is book depository, but they are based in UK also, so same story.

The bookdepository is safe, they say they handle the customs fees themselves at import to the EU and everything I ordered from them has VAT taken care of. If by any chance there are issues at anything you order from them, send it back and complain to them. Or check with them before ordering.

Otherwise if new books in english, well, also worth considering the EU amazon stores (amazon also owns the bookdepository). it is amazon but hey, it's by far the biggest selection and most convenient shopping if you are in a non english speaking country.

I am opening an exception for goodreads, I sometimes click compare books and OMG they read a lot of the same obscure stuff I did also, and there is a special category of real friendship which is liking the same books and being able to talk about them.

What you read that and love it also? You also hated that? That might not be real friendship but it is a kind of friendship for some specifically rare viewpoints...

>No one is reading my reviews there, nor react to my status updates, which is kinda inducing an isolated feeling, lol.

How about you reach out to others instead? Do you want dopamine hits from likes or interacting with people? Because if you want to interact from people, you can reach out on your own, read reviews by newest, click on like when you see a good point or argument, comment on a review if it is interesting.

It can be kind of organic, to meet strangers by hanging around small fandoms, commenting on new things, or following people whose taste or reviews you like.

The 150 euros is likely a customs thing because they are sending books from the UK into the EU. And since they are not charging for shipping, you can always divide your order into several smaller orders, assuming there are no books or sets which are individually over 150 euros.

The customs change at July 1st last year, everything is now charged VAT, I do not know how your country is handling it, but for a lot of countries, namely mine, receiving books from outside the EU can be pretty expensive, and slow and bureaucratic. It is not necessarily the bookdepository's fault and they are the non-eu bookseller which seems to be understanding better how to pay for VAT themselves so you get stuff without needing to pay VAT and fees again.

Be careful about ordering books from outside the EU. Otherwise, sadly, just check the within-EU amazon stores, or any local stores.

Or you know, ebooks.

She won lots of Hugo awards, lots of people do know her. New novel about Roswell coming out next year.

Also among other things, she is without comparison at writing lots of very very good Christmas stories. I keep hoping every year she will publish one.

She has got several Christmas story anthologies which I recommend this time of the year, for anyone really.