This is probably a stupid idea, but what about reviewing a book by choosing a word that best describes it? Then you'd see a little list of the words most commonly chosen for that book, probably just the top three or four.

Now, that could be a system where you type the word (which could get messy in the long run) or where you have a complete list of options (say, thirty different ones...) and then each book could have a little list under it:

The following words were most often chosen to describe this book:

Neophytic 45.22%
Excellent 27.74%
Humorous 10.27%
(link for see other words goes here)

And you'd know it was a good, funny book for beginners. (Neophytic isn't a word, is it? Damn.)

I'm probably off in left field on this one, but I figured it might look interesting.
Actually, making a whole other voting system for books, where you get one vote per book but you get to choose whether each word in the list applies to it, resulting in a set of attributions to each book by each voter...but I digress.

Also, discussion on use.perl.org has turned to the same topic recently.


***EDIT*** Fixed a word-order typo, added link to use.perl.org discussion

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You are what you think.