How to choose your next book from what you loved about the last one

Finish this sentence

Write 'I liked this because...' and keep going until you get past 'the story was good'. Perhaps you liked an isolated setting, a dry narrative voice, a close friendship, or the feeling that every conversation concealed something.

The answer does not need literary terminology. 'I wanted to stay in that house' and 'I liked not knowing whom to trust' are both useful starting points. They describe the experience you want from another book.

Separate the ingredients

Try sorting your answer into a few ingredients. You do not need to fill every category, and a book can satisfy one preference while changing another.

• Atmosphere: comforting, unsettling, playful, melancholy or something else.
• Setting: a particular place, period, community or kind of world.
• Voice: intimate, detached, witty, lyrical or direct.
• Pace: slow observation, steady discovery or rapid movement.
• Relationships: family, friendship, rivalry, romance or solitude.

Choose what you are willing to change

Wanting every ingredient repeated can leave you comparing each new book with the one you just finished. Keep the two things that matter most and allow something else to change. You might keep the atmosphere and voice but try a different period.

Read the recommendation's explanation before collecting the title. 'Both are popular' tells you little about the match. A useful explanation identifies a shared feature and makes any important difference clear.

Keep a small, usable shortlist

Choose a few candidates and sample their opening pages where a publisher or bookseller makes a sample available. The prose itself may settle the choice more quickly than another long list.

Reedr's homepage includes a worked example of combining ingredients from two books. You can use that idea yourself: write down one thing you want from each book, then look for a recommendation that explains how it connects them. Save only the books you actually want to return to.