My Pseudo-Scientific Methodology for Choosing Books to Read
And how I’ve had to learn to be flexible
This year, every other book I’ve read has been a recommendation — which for me is both unexpected and unusual. Prior to 2022, the past few years I’ve been an incredibly picky reader, carefully researching about and selecting books before deciding to read them.
This all started in 2017 (my year of quitting jobs, moving countries, and epiphanies!) when I came to the conclusion that there exist so many more books out there that I wanted to read than I could ever hope to. And since I had a finite amount of time and there seemed to be an infinite supply of material, I needed to be strategic about my reading choices. Reading shouldn’t be wasted.
Finding good books to read is one of the most interesting problems to me. The Stanford University Literary Lab writes that the number of English language novels is ‘closer to 5 million than 500,000 or 50 million’. Estimates of course vary widely, but whichever estimate you take to be true, there are so many books — and unlike a song that can be listened to in a matter of minutes, it takes hours to finish books. And it’s often hard to tell from reading the back cover of a book and sometimes hard to tell even a couple of chapters in, how much you’ll like it. It just feels like a situation where tools and strategies are needed. It makes me wonder — why aren’t we all talking about book selection strategies? How is everyone else figuring it out?
Because I think book selection is important. I suspect that most people would love to read if they knew how to find the right books. My longest breaks from regular reading have happened when I’ve been disappointed by a couple of books and when I don’t have anything on my ‘to-read’ list that excites me. I’m of the opinion that reading tastes are very individual. A book that speaks to me may not speak to you, and so while bestseller lists can be alright to fall back on, I think reading research should be much more personalized. I wonder if some of the people who have never liked reading just don’t have mainstream book tastes.
For my book research, I use Goodreads. On Goodreads, I’m constantly on the lookout for likeminded readers. When I finish a book I enjoyed, I look through the book’s reviews and ratings. I skim for people who have given the book the exact same rating that I did and who seem to be people who think like me (as much as you can tell from a review). I then go to their profiles and skim through the books they have read, looking for any overlap between books that I have read. If they’ve rated those books similarly to how I have and if they seem to be active readers (reading at least a book a month), I follow them. I now follow a lot of people who have some level of overlapping taste as me. These people are active on Goodreads, meaning they’re regularly adding books to their ‘to-read’ lists and regularly finishing and reviewing books. I get these updates in my feed, and since these are people I’ve hand-picked based on their reading preferences, through their Goodreads activity they’re very often recommending books that are great fits for me. And now when I go to the view a book I’m interested in within Goodreads, Goodreads also shows me what the people I follow thought of the book.
So with this new source of finding great books, I’m constantly adding books to my to-read pile. As of today, there are 712 books on the list and I’m adding new books faster than I’m finishing reading books, which means that there’s a necessary part two in my book selection strategy. I’m finding plenty of books that seem to fit my particular interests, but there are too many of them!
Part two is that I checkout from the library usually three to five but sometimes as many as eight to ten books at a time. And then I read or skim through the first few pages of each and then choose one or two out of the pile to actually read. And if at any point in time, my interest in the book is starting to fade, I abandon it — as again, my principle is that there are too many books out there to waste time on ones that aren’t a good fit for me.
I will say this approach has rekindled my love of reading and I’ve been able to explore and understand my reading preferences in ways that I never have before. I’ve drifted away from mainstream fiction and discovered my own niches. I know that I like fiction that is somewhat experimental in form. I like novels that explore concepts or maybe characters — but I’m not really into plot, strangely enough. I enjoy nonfiction books about place, but in a general sense — books about cities or trails or the wild or gentrification.
But…I’ve also been a bit of a snob and somewhat close-minded. While having brunch with some friends back in the first week of January, when they were generously recommending books that they liked and talking about what they’d enjoyed, I caught myself dismissing without consideration their recommendations and opinions. You don’t understand, I was thinking, I’m very particular. I don’t like regular books. I have a system. I probably won’t like what you like.
And then it started to feel like the universe was testing me and my system — I started receiving book recommendations almost right and left. I received three books for Christmas. One was Kidnapped, a Robert Louis Stevenson pirate adventure novel — something incredibly plot driven and one that usually would never have made it onto the list. Another was Consequences by Penelope Lively, an author I like, so closer to something I would normally read but still not one on my ‘to-read’ list and then the last was The Art of Noticing, a book that did look really interesting but not something that I would have picked up on my own.
Then, my boyfriend bought A Place of My Own by Michael Pollan for me. A few days later, his grandmother brought over a John Grisham novel, something I would never have read on my own — I’ve been unfairly skeptical of and pretty much avoided all the big name, high volume writers like John Grisham, James Patterson, and Danielle Steel. Towards the end of January, I become a new manager, and my boss bought Radical Candor by Kim Scott for me.
I read the books. At first, out of politeness, but I quickly realized I was enjoying the process. These books were so different from what I had read recently — or ever — that there was enjoyment in the discovery of something new. I made myself finish them, and I’m glad I did — they all had something to offer. More recommendations kept coming, all unsolicited. A friend sent me an excited message gushing over a book she had just finished — Sexing The Cherry by Jeanette Winterson. Not something I would have ever picked, but I checked it out from the library. I was talking about therapy to a friend one day and she recommended Counseling Toads (a wonderful little book by the way). A coworker recommended On Trails by Robert Moor. They kept coming and I kept reading. I was still able to squeeze in some of the books from my own to-read list, and I noticed I was actually rating the books recommended to me slightly higher than the ones from my own list!
What was happening?
Thinking through this, I think I had gotten so stuck in my own system and in reading a pretty particular type of book that I’d forgotten about the wealth of books out there and the value of recommendations from family and friends that I love and that know me! I still value my Goodreads system and I still love combing through looking for books that sound good, but these recommendations were just a great reminder of what else was out there. And really, where did I get my initial preferences from? From books introduced to me as a child and adolescent by teachers, parents, friends, librarians. From personal recommendations.
Again, I still love my system. I still use it, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to others. I do think there is a place and a need for thoughtful research in selecting books. But…I would add now that like everything, there needs to be balance. And there’s space for a book club read and for the book that your mom bought you and the book that you liked the cover of at the bookstore and the one you stumbled across at a garage sale.
So the net is cast wide again, and I’ve even thought lately about soliciting recommendations — very unlike the old me.
