Questions on Book Recommender Systems

City Picture with Red and Green Accents (1921), Paul Klee

1. Does past purchasing behaviour offer a reliable guide to a reader's future likes and preferences?

2. Would an automated system that can retrieve and utilise digital on literary fiction using the language of emotion be more successful than one based simply on the system of past purchases?

3. Can meaningful data visualisations be created for the mood or affect of literary fiction on the minds of its readers? 

4. Does personal preference shown in music and literature evolve? Can this evolution be patterned?

5. Do the data correlate with gender, race and income, or rather with the major emotional events in a reader's life, such as graduation, a first job, parenthood, retirement or bereavement? 

6. What is the place of individual valuation in a depersonalised system of categorisation and classification? 

7. How sure are we of understanding a reader's mind by means of the extrapolation of data concerning their tastes and preferences? To what extent does a set of analysed data explain who that person really is?