Sometimes choosing a new book to read is an unexpectedly difficult endeavor. Many of us have extensive lists of to-be-read books, but sometimes those lists aren’t enough. What do we do when we have seen the same six books pop up on everyone else’s blogs? What do we do when we finish a book and love it so much that we want to read something just like?
The answer is that we can head to What Should I Read Next?.
What Should I Read Next? is an algorithm based website that allows users to search on books that they love in order to find reading material. Users can search by author, title, and often by ISBN. I did a sample search using the young adult book Divergent by Veronica Roth because I wanted to see what results would appear for a new(ish) book. My sample search resulted in 50 suggested titles. The image to the left is a screenshot of just a few of them. These books all share common genres or themes – you can see those tags in red – with Divergent. This sample list most often pulls from the “Dystopias” and “Young Adult Fiction” tags, but it also creates suggestions from subjects like “Identity (Psychology)”, “Courage”, “Social Class”, “Families”, and “Illinois–Chicago”. So if you wanted to find a list of popular fiction set in Chicago, you could click on that subject tag, and one would appear. I did a couple of other searches as well (one on Good Omens and one on Pride and Prejudice), and the suggestions are spot on.
Sadly, What Should I Read Next? is not the most beautiful website I have ever seen. It is simple text on a white background and is probably unusable for anyone with a degree of red-green colorblindness. (There is a lot of red text on green. I’ve emailed the site and suggested that they choose a different color palette, but I’m doubtful that they will change it.)
Despite those critiques, I appreciate What Should I Read Next? for the simple tool that it is. When left to my own devices, I tend to stumble across the same books over and over again, so I like that What Should I Read Next? shakes thing up a bit.
If you know of any other great places to find book suggestions, please share! I know that many people use Goodreads lists, Amazon forums, and, of course, blogs, and I would love to know of any gems that you have discovered.
Kristen Twardowski 
http://Www.literature-map.com is quite fun. It doesn’t list specific books, but you type in an author’s name and it gives you a graphic showing similar writers. The closer two names are together on the graphic the more similar they are. Some of the suggestions are a bit questionable sometimes but I’ve found it’s thrown up some authors I probably wouldn’t have tried otherwise.
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That is fabulous. I’m a big fan of visualizations, so seeing how authors ‘relate’ to one another is very helpful. (And it is all interactive!)
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For newly published novels, I often browse fantasticfiction.com. They list coming books by month and genre, giving a full synopsis.
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Oh, that sounds really useful, and I don’t think I had heard of it before. Thanks for mentioning it here!
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I don’t really need any MORE recommendations, I get them from reading all the different blogs but for non-bloggers this is perfect. I tried it out with Colleen Hoover because I’m always looking for books that can make me ugly cry and I got Kim Holden’s Bright Side as a rec, so spot on!
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It’s good to know that your test search had logical results! (And I understand what you mean about not needing any more book suggestion. My poor to-be-read list.)
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How neat! Thanks for posting Kristen!
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I know that most of us already have a ton of books we want to read, but I love stumbling across tools like this one!
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Same here! You can never have too many bookish tools!
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I never knew such a tool exisited. If I wanted to read a new book I’d spend hours in a book store just reading books before I made my final choice. Thanks for the information!
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Ha! Bookstores are dangerous that way. It is always tempting to look at the back of one book, and then another, and then another…
This is why I have to set time limits when I’m book shopping.
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I could spend hours in a book store and often have
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Sounds brilliant, thanks for posting this!
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It’s a fun tool to play around with!
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It sounds like a great tool – however frequenting so many book blogs means that I am always snowed under by a raft of recommendations and last year read loads of books through my blogging buddies including the Red Rising trilogy, the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, Truthwitch, Cinder, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, The Fifth Season, Rebel of the Sands… the list could go on and on! But Himself is also an avid reader and regularly will recommend books, too. No wonder I have so many books and so little time…
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I know! Blogging already provides introductions to great books. This is a fun tool, but do many of us need more book suggestions? (My bookshelves say, no.)
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Mine, too!
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This is actually one of my favorite go-to conversations. I love asking people what they like to read, and what they recommend. Often recomendations say as much, if not more, about the person. I think tools like “What Should I Read Next” and “Good Reads” are useful, but there’s no substitute for a librarian or bibliophile who knows you well.
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It is wonderful to be able to ask what individuals love to read. I know that I occasionally haunt the reading lists of my favorite authors. It tells me a lot about them.
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Reblogged this on The Owl Lady.
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I’m going to go check it out! Thanks so much!
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It’s a fun tool to play with!
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It IS, THANKS!
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