What does it mean to say that you like something? Tom Vanderbilt explores this question, as well as many other facets of taste, in his novel You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice. This novel is a peek into all of the factors which determine why one’s favorite color is blue, or why they picked salmon off the menu, or why someone watches certain movies on Netflix instead of others. But this novel is also about what it means to have as many choices as consumers do today. In the digital age access to different products is virtually limitless. As companies collect consumer data and utilize it to make suggestions for purchasing and viewing, how much of what consumers like is truly chosen by them? How does social media affect the decisions consumers make? Is choice influenced by taste, or is taste influenced by choice?

After reading this novel, it seems Vanderbilt’s objective was to demonstrate how annoyingly complex taste is. No single factor can determine or define taste. Taste is not merely a surface level opinion- i.e. “I like this, I don’t like that.” There is a subsequent layer of context involved, such as if a consumer likes something given its category. Vanderbilt did an excellent job at describing this. He uses relatable examples, such as the fact that no fast food burger can truly compare to a gourmet meal, but one may consider a fast food chain’s burger to be pretty good, given its category of fast food. 

He then describes many other influential factors, however. These plentiful factors give the reader too many pieces of information at once. To demonstrate how tiresome this is, a content overview will follow:  Vanderbilt goes on to include the mere exposure effect, which states the more you’re exposed to something the more you’ll like it. He then dives into the matter of “assimilation or contrast,” explaining that assimilation occurs when one’s experience aligns with their expectation (causing their general liking for the thing to increase), while contrast occurs if the expectations do not align with the experience (causing one’s general liking for the thing to decrease). He also touches on the relationship between liking and time. These are just a few of the concepts discussed in Chapter 1. Yes, you read that right. All of these concepts were explored in just one chapter of the novel. 

As demonstrated above, Vanderbilt jumps from topic to topic in You May Also Like. He proposes an overarching idea for each chapter- he covers what taste is, why people like what they like, how they like what they like, how they know what they like, and so on. There is no straightforward answer for any of the questions he poses. Instead of a cut-and-dry answer he tends to give an overload of information and alternative possibilities. Taste, it seems, is made up of too many confounding variables to truly make sense of- all the concepts in Chapter 1 may just as well have filled an entire book on their own, and even then the ability to fully grasp taste would be illusive. 

It is ironic to note that this confounding trait of taste is reflected fairly well in the way each chapter is written. Vanderbilt introduces one or two key stories, events, or companies which coincide with the overarching idea of the chapter. For example, much of the second chapter, “The Fault is Not in Our Stars, but in Ourselves: Liking in a Networked Age,” is about Netflix and Yelp. He utilizes these two companies to demonstrate two important concepts. The first is that you cannot hide from your own tastes in this age of technology where your every online move can be tracked (companies need not know what you SAY you like, because they can SEE what you like). This point was supported by a Netflix employee who Vanderbilt had interviewed. The second is that “electronic word of mouth can move markets” (Chapter 2). This point was backed up by findings and anecdotes that Vanderbilt uncovered while talking to a Yelp and online review analyst. 

You May Also Like thus did a very good job of tying evidence to the arguments. Vanderbilt wrote some sort of example, statistic or anecdote to parallel every claim he made. The problem was that he had laid out too many claims. If the audience of this novel is people looking for a surefire way to understand taste, they will be left unsatiated. 

What is Vanderbilt actually arguing about taste? That taste is fickle? Perhaps. That people like what is familiar? That people like what is new? That it honestly depends on the context? What context? There are simply an endless amount of possible arguments, just as there are endless choices to make. 

Despite the lack of one clear direction, there are tons of exciting tidbits of information in this novel. Some statements have the power to really resonate with the reader. Others ring out as simple truisms. Statements from Chapter 4 such as, “the things we are not expecting to see, we are less likely to see” and “what you think about something as affects how you feel about it” are phrases that anyone trying to market a good, service, or idea will find useful (Chapter 4). Other psychosocial observations like “in an infinite realm of choice our choices often seem to cluster by default towards those we can see others making, or away from those we sense too many are choosing” seem to hit the metaphorical nail on the head when describing how the visibility provided by the internet causes popular things to become even more popular (Chapter 5). It’s a shame that the novel is overloaded with these sentences. It makes it overwhelmingly hard for the reader to grasp what the true takeaways should be. 

Indeed, the main difficulty this novel faces is providing readers with something they can walk away from with a true general knowledge of. The arguments made in You May Also Like range from the overarching ideas of the chapters, to the few main themes within the chapters, to even a mere paragraph or sentence of additional (yet noteworthy) information. 

Based on the structure Vanderbilt attempted to follow for each of his chapters, it seems as though he was attempting a breakthrough pop-psychology book. At first glance the layout is very similar to the popular novels of Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell’s novels combine storytelling with research and fact. However Gladwell’s novels do not lose momentum. His pacing is such that one topic is never brushed over too quickly or lingered upon for too long. Vanderbilt has the potential to produce a work similar to Outliers or The Tipping Point if he finds a way to perfect his pacing and to shrewdly pick his material. 

As someone who expected to really enjoy this book, I have to say I did not like it. But my main takeaways from the novel inform me that this could be because the expectations I had contrasted with my experience. Perhaps since I read it in a short period of time, my liking is different than it would be if I had savored it. I can conclusively say, however, that I wish some topics were more drawn out. Yes, taste is complicated, but it was even more confounding to only lightly touch on a myriad of subtopics instead of driving a few key points home.