What the title says. I’m looking for some books to fit my mood and I’m having the hardest time. It’d also be fun to be able to search outside of the box sometime and widen my reading scope.
I saw a post with people joking about what books they’d swipe left on, but that made me wonder if there were actually any good apps for recommendations?
I’ve tried asking Reddit (some great insights but no luck with that I’m looking for atm), browsing the bookstore in person like the olden days, a few websites but they were all pretty lacking. I heard ChatGPT is helpful but I haven’t found any good ones that let you ask without paying.
Anyway, how do you find your next favorite reads?
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Right now, it’s finding the books of authors who influenced the people I am inspired by.
What I usually do is I follow Instagram accounts of book retailers (the one I check the most is Waterstones) and scroll down their feed to check the books they publicise).
Then there are other other book genres that I read that are not widely publicised on social media, as History books are (I’m a History undergraduate, so I read them quite often), for which I have to go to a book retailer’s website and check their History section. I don’t usually like this method because if you want to check books that are not brand-new or bestsellers, you have a quite tedious work of leafing through the tons of books that are there until I find something that catches my eye.
I’m glad you made this post, because I would like to find better ways to find new books.
I’ve found good books in the By The Book interviews in NYT. Crimereads and Lithub have good lists. But the person who says they slowly explore a bookstore has the most enviable method.
I browse bookstores. And by now I‘m secure in my habit to totally be judging a book by its cover. Well, not completely, but I‘m a total sucker for good book cover design. And if a book has a good cover design I‘ll be much more likely to pick it up and give it a closer look. Sometimes also titles stick out to me. Good book cover design + interesting title will automatically upgrade books into round 2 of giving it a closer look.
By now book covers are actually quite a good estimator for what kind of vibe a book has and if I might enjoy it. Book cover designs usually follow certain rules (for example: YA use a lot of pastel colors and have a distinct character drawing style, crime novel covers tend to be dark (unless it‘s meant for a light summer holiday read then they‘re often blue), sci-fi works a lot with very clear and crisp designs & drawings and fantasy hardly ever have a reduced or minimalistic design, but tend to be quite busy). And the design choices give me an impression about the book and if I might enjoy it. I‘m probably more drawn to books which somewhat defy the covet tropes of their genre or which just have a design I really enjoy. A good example for my book buying habit is probably „Rivers of London“. It‘s one of my favorite books (actually book series) and I picked it up in a store because the title made me curious (I‘m a big fan of London and fantasy books set there spark my interest automatically) and it had a really really lovely sketch of a London map on the cover. In the US, the book was released under the title „Midnight riot“ with a very standard, more crime book like cover with a picture of a male shadow running in the night. Super boring. I doubt that it would have even registered with me in a shop.
So long tangent short: I do love good book cover designs and they have quite the impact on whether I may pick up a book and give it another look. I probably have missed out on good books this way but I also have made some unexpected great finds. And I do love book covers so I‘ll stick with it.
In my country the bookstores have little notes on them from employees who enjoyed them. When I wander around, I usually check them out, my shopkeepers are good critics.
Believe it or not, the soulless algorithm also known as Amazon has actually been tossing up good recommendations for me lately, as well as having good holiday sales in the Kindle store. If you like fantasy and/or YA, bookriot.com is another good source. And finally, several news outlets are releasing their top 100 lists from 2023. NPR and Time magazine have lists from a wide variety of genres (including literary fiction) this year.
The other day I spent the whole day going through the Penguin Classics list and writing everything down that seemed interesting… might not be the most efficient thing, but going through lists like that helps me find new books quite often
Goodreads has a bunch of long user-made lists based on theme, so if you have any themes or tropes that you like I’d say check that out
Some libraries have a program where you can give them a list of books/shows you like, or what mood/style you’re looking for, and they can curate a list for you.
Scrolling r/52book and my kindle recommendations.
I google what my favorite authors have recommended.