Nothing's harder for a reading buff than the endless and sometimes frustrating search to find your next great read.
Finding your way toward the best book recommendations isn't always an easy task.
Book recommendations from random places don't always cut it, and you often end up feeling unsatisfied with them.
Picking up a book to read can sometimes feel like rolling dice. No matter what, it never seems to be a surefire banger.
Sometimes, you even get bored midway through, seeking something different. Other times, while you manage to drag yourself over the finish line, the ending feels very disappointing. If it's not a tough-to-read style, it's poorly-developed characters or a flat plot.
While there's no fail-proof way to ensure that you pick a book that you'll eventually enjoy with each recommendation, some of our expert tips can help you find the needle in the haystack more often than not.
Here are 11 eagled-eyed, surprisingly easy, and altogether spot-on considerations for when you choose your next read.
Page length is a much-unremarked factor when choosing a book to read. It lags behind color pops of book cover art, guarantees by other reader friends, and other personal biases.
So, before you read your next thriller, romance, fantasy, or contemporary fiction, take a look at its potential for chunkiness and compare it with your current reading capacity.
If it's okay, you can then start considering other factors. If it isn't, your best bet would be dropping it in favor of finding a book you can finish.
This is perhaps one of the more obvious rules to stick to when searching for an interesting book to read. Still, it's quite easy to fall into this very much avoidable trap of physical looks.
The book publishing industry is a well-rounded art institution these days, with the development of new movie adaptations to go along with the perpetually exciting covers, jackets, sprayed edges, and special editions.
So, don't get carried away. Always remember that only the text really matters.
Please note that this pronouncement does not necessarily apply to certain groups, such as avid book collectors and other aestheticians.
Every reader has their favorite writing style. You may not know it yet, but there are a range of styles that you absolutely mess with. Bibliophiles are usually familiar with theirs, as it's most accurately observed over some time.
However. even if you don't read a lot of books in a year, certain triggers determine whether you can actually enjoy the flow of writing. By paying attention to these factors, you can quickly narrow down authors and styles to books written in a certain way- such as the first-person or third-person omniscient narrative- that you can follow more easily in your mind's eye.
Apart from the writing style, another key element of the work of literature needs to be thoroughly considered. This is where your preferred themes come in.
In the art of writing, themes are the author's most readily wielded tool to aid in capturing the imagination of readers. The better written a book's themes are, the more likely it is to possess an intriguing plot.
Here's a list of some of the most common elements associated with different genres:
This is a no-brainer, but it's still worth reminding you about. If you enjoyed a book, the chances are that you'll be able to at least get through other works written by that same author.
This is especially true of book series and is a useful tactic to help you pick your next great read when you need to make a decision.
Yes, the publisher matters when you're looking for your next read. While there's no guarantee that all their offerings will be up to par, it's still a great place to start whenever you're in doubt.
You can subscribe to their newsletters or follow them on social media to keep abreast of their latest releases as a good source of books to read in the future.
The blurb is the story's premise, a heads-up, if you like, giving you a clue of what the book will be about. A quick glance at a book's blurb is often more than enough to tell you whether it's for you or not.
The only issue here is that blurbs aren't for everyone. If you, like me, are averse to spoilers of any sort, including the soft and subtle spoilers that often come with book blurbs, you'd be better served by considering other factors to find your next great book recommendation.
Discussions, book of the month picks, and all the other activities that book clubs revolve around are some of the most unique treasure troves of sweet book recommendations.
Whether it's a list of annual read sections or works mentioned in passing during a particularly intense book review, there's a steady and unending supply of quality recommendations for you.
Now, all you need is to find the right book club...
Like the choice of an author, the genre you opt for is one of the most significant determinants for whether you ultimately enjoy your book pick or not.
Everyone has a favorite genre, even people who think they don't. And, while it's still encouraged to be a diverse reader, you can double up by exploring subgenres within your preferences. African literature lovers can explore its classics like Things Fall Apart, contemporary reads like Even When Your Voice Shakes by Ruby Yayra Goka, and several works of speculative fiction (including Nnedi Okorafor's Afro-Jujuism) in both short and long-form prose.
On the other hand, fantasy lovers can explore high, grimdark, and urban. The same applies if you read Romance, where you can check out its subgenres in historical, Christian, YA, erotica, or chick lit.
Goodreads is the book-ing equivalent of Facebook
Today, Goodreads has over 150 million members on its website, a huge chunk of whom are active users. Founded in December 2006 and launched in January 2007, Goodreads has grown exponentially, with its feature-rich user interface driving interactions and impressions on its highly popular online platform.
The recommendations sections are huge, with tons of resources and tools to guide you, from comprehensive listicles, reading challenges, book list comparisons, reviews, discussion threads, virtual book clubs, and star ratings.
If you don't have a Goodreads account, now's the time to create one. Just note that the web browser experience trumps the mobiles'. The iOS app is more stable and has a few more advanced features than the Android version (which hasn't received any major overhaul in a while).
Book reviews almost always come with soft spoilers. But, when well-written, they can contain less spoilers than blurbs. Much like the latter, book reviews are a quick way into the heart of the story- this time, from the point of view of someone who's actually read the book.
Make no mistake: human opinions will forever remain objective. A raving review of a bestseller doesn't mean you're destined to give the book maximum star ratings. However, it can guide your decision-making, helping you identify what can work for your reading tastes and what is almost certain not to.
Like it is in football scouting, finding your next exciting read requires a lot of patience and quite a bit of experience.
You may not always get it right at the start. But, over time, you can come to understand the mutual patterns and themes across those books you rate so highly.
Drop a book recommendation in the comments, and tell us why you think we'll enjoy it.
