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    You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice
    Unavailable
    You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice
    Unavailable
    You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice
    Ebook461 pages7 hours

    You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice

    By Tom Vanderbilt

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the bestselling author of Traffic, a brilliant and entertaining exploration of our personal tastes--why we like the things we like, and what it says about us.

    Everyone knows his or her favourite colour, the foods we most enjoy, and which season of The Sopranos deserves the most stars on Netflix. But what does it really mean when we like something? How do we decide what's good? Is it something biological? What is the role of our personal experiences in shaping our tastes? And how do businesses make use of this information to develop and sell their products?
         In You May Also Like, Tom Vanderbilt dives deep into this complex and fascinating world. He explores the physiology of eating to reveal how our taste buds, which can only recognize five tastes, interact with our olfactory systems and our memories to create an astounding array of flavours. He shows how difficult it is, even for experts, to pinpoint exactly what makes something good or enjoyable, and how companies like Netflix can make or lose millions based on their ability to predict what we will enjoy. Like his bestselling book Traffic, Vanderbilt's new book takes us on a stimulating and surprising intellectual journey that helps us better understand our world and ourselves, and the things we so often take for granted.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateMay 10, 2016
    ISBN9780307402646
    Unavailable
    You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice
    Author

    Tom Vanderbilt

    Tom Vanderbilt writes on design, technology, science, and culture for many publications, including Wired, Slate, The London Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, Artforum, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine and Popular Science. He is contributing editor to award-winning design magazines I.D. and Print, contributing editor to Business Week Online, and contributing writer of the popular blog Design Observer. He is the author of three previous books: Trafic: Why we drive the way we do (and what it says about us), Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America and The Sneaker Book.

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    Reviews for You May Also Like

    3/5

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    • 3/5
      This is a book about why we like what we like. The author explores major areas in which preferences are commonly shared, from food and restaurants, to books, movies, music, beer, and even cats. For me, not all of the areas he discussed were of interest, or rather, they might have been had he not belabored them so much. In addition, I didn’t always find the studies he described persuasive. Basically he concludes that there are lots of reasons we have tastes for one thing or another, and it’s hard to tell what they are. It could be related to our memories (we love something because it reminds us of happy times as kids); expectations (the wine is expensive, so it is “supposed” to be good); the influence of our culture (we grew up in Philadelphia so we love Philly cheesesteaks) or friends or “experts,” or even identity issues (e.g., I want to be seen as someone who likes highbrow things, or conversely, l want to be thought of as more avant garde, and so I want to choose lowbrow things). We both want to be like others and we want to be different from others. Which is it? It may well be both, but a theory for anything and everything doesn’t explain much. Similarly with our taste in books and movies: seeing positive ratings by others can influence people to upgrade their evaluations, and seeing negative ratings can induce them to downgrade them. Vanderbilt avers we crave novelty, but we also crave familiarity. What exactly does all that explain?In other words, there are theories that explain every possibility, and therefore they provide no enlightenment whatsoever.The author does include a few interesting vignettes about music and food and movies, but beyond being diverting, they just don’t say much. He also poses some thought-provoking questions. How exactly, for example, would you describe what a carrot tastes like, without using the word carrot? (Vanderbilt points to a paucity of words to account for taste, unlike the plethora of theories to describe it!)This doesn’t mean the subject doesn’t have the potential for being fun. There are some hilarious videos on youtube, to list but a few, with people arguing about whether grits should have sugar or salt; which Jewish holiday dishes are better (“The Great Latke-Hamantaschen Debates”); and whether deep dish pizza is better than thin crust. But in this book, the strength of preferences and the reasons behind that vehemence was mainly discussed with respect to very, very esoteric types of music.Evaluation: I hoped this would be better, but in spite of what I thought was a potentially interesting topic, it didn’t engage me much. But then again, it’s all a matter of taste. What I like not so much, other readers/listeners will undoubtedly like a lot.
    • 1/5
      Some fun factoids, but overall too academic and uninviting. Ugh!
    • 4/5
      It’s four stars if you leave out the chapter on fine art! What do we know? People are sheep, imitating others for fads, through Instagram, Facebook and the rest of the mind-numbing social media of the current age. Most people cannot tell you why they like what they say they like. Hmm. Nonetheless, I found the book interesting, if at times annoying for the many references that I had to look up in Wikipedia- who knew there was a cat breed called Rag Doll?