It’s a familiar feeling for book lovers: You finished a fantastic book, and now you’re craving the next one. Before you go into narrative withdrawal, try using one of these methods to find your next favorite book.
1: Wander in your local library.
Some of the best books of my life, I found by walking up and down the aisles of my local library. See what books are face out. See what the librarians have to say. Is there a new books area? Or a shelf of themed book recommendations picked by patrons and staff? Libraries are a treasure trove of new books waiting to be discovered, and the fact that books are free to check out means you can take home a stack of possible options without worrying about wasting money if you start one that’s not for you. In the US, you can use libraryfinder.org to find the public library closest to you.
2: Visit your local bookstore.
There’s no feeling like holding new books in your hands, getting ready to pick the one you’ll take home with you. Local bookstores will often have hand-written recommendations from their booksellers. Read what these booksellers think, and see if it matches what you are looking for as your next read. Or, ask the local bookseller if they have a recommendation for you. They live among the books—let them guide you with their knowledge!
Unfortunately, not everyone lives within an easy distance of a local bookstore. If that’s the case, you can still support a local store by using a website like bookshop.org. Choose a bookstore in your state or find one in a favorite city. Browse their recommendations on their store’s page within the site, and support their business when you buy something from Bookshop.
3: Browse StoryGraph.
StoryGraph is a reading tracker and book recommendation app that uses community reviews to determine a book’s characteristics such mood, pace, plot, and character development. From there, you can browse similar books or read reviews from other readers. Similar to Goodreads (which is owned by Amazon), StoryGraph has more options for ratings (such as quarter and half stars) and more detailed statistics on the books you’ve read. It also has a more robust content warning system if you like to know what you’re getting into before you start a new book.
4: Look for recommendations on social media.
Book recommendations on TikTok and Instagram have blown up in the past few years, for good reason. Lovers of books are finding their new favorite books based on the recommendations of book bloggers, booktokers, and bookstagrammers. You’ll probably need to search by the specific genre of book that you enjoy in order to find the right people to follow. If your favorite author uses one of those sites, follow them and see what books they recommend!
Or, you can ask for a personalized recommendation from users on the Suggestmeabook subreddit. Readers there will give you recommendations based on the information you give them to work with. If you aren’t comfortable posting, you can browse previous posts to see if any recommendations line up with what you’re looking for.
5: Work your way through a list.
One way to stave off the last-page malaise is to have your next book ready to go as soon as you’re done with your current one. Working your way through a list of recommended books, either in the genre that you love or a list of classic books for all time, can help expose you to books you wouldn’t have read otherwise. Most likely, you’ll find some books that you love and some books that you don’t—and that’s okay! Not every book is for every reader, and you don’t need to finish every book you start.
Use a website like ListChallenge.com to see how many books in a list you’ve already read and to see which lists are most likely to have more books for you. Each list has its own slant and personality, so scan down the lists to see which one has books that are the most interesting to you. A few well-known lists of English-language books are BBC’s Top 100 Books You Need to Read Before You Die, Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels, or for more recent novels, try the New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.
Do you have other ways you love to find your next book? Let us know on the Penny Magic Instagram or by reaching out here on our site!