As probably the biggest database of books on the planet, Goodreads is an first-class way to discover your next read.

For the uninitiated, Goodreads is a community-oriented reading website where users (90 million and counting) tin can store, rate, review, and discuss books.

If you lot have merely finished a book or desire to line up your next read alee of time, here are some ways you lot can use Goodreads to piece of work out what you should be reading side by side.

i. Use the "Books Similar To" Method

The easiest and fastest fashion to find a new book to read is by using Goodreads' own algorithm, which connects books on like topics.

Let'southward say, for instance, that you've just read Run the Storm by George Michaelsen Foy (an evocative recount of the sinking of the El Faro in 2015). Using Google, or a search engine of your choice, type in "books similar to Run the Storm". One of the kickoff options volition exist a link that brings you to a page resembling the one below.

Screenshot showing the 'similar books' page on Goodreads

Books which the algorithm has decided are pretty similar volition prove up. In general, it works quite well. On this page, the very summit recommendation is for a book that's also most the El Faro sinking, while the others are nonfiction chronicles of other shipwrecks. Sometimes, however, the recommendations can be a footling more bizarre.

For the best results, use this method with books that are more than pop, and then Goodreads has a better chance of finding recommendations that are genuinely similar.

The biggest downside of this method is that it does crave yous to have a book in mind already; you tin't just experience like reading whatever romance novel, y'all accept to feel like reading a romance novel that'due south similar to In Bed with the Dominate, for example.

2. Use Goodreads' Listopia Feature

Screenshot of the home page to Goodreads Listopia

Goodreads' Listopia feature is first-class, considering it works both when you're looking for more targeted recommendations (akin to the "like books" selection above), and when you're just in the mood for a genre more generally.

Users can choose to put any Goodreads book on a "listing" of their choosing. And as you tin can encounter from the screenshot above, there are lists for a huge range of subgenres and plot points, from the broad "Best Books E'er" to ones as specific as "YA Historical Fiction Gear up in Colonial and Revolutionary America".

Search for lists on the topics you desire using the search bar on the right.

Alternatively, if yous already have a book you lot're thinking of, check to meet if information technology'south been placed a listing and then cheque out the other recommendations on that list.

The Lists With This Book button volition exist sandwiched betwixt Questions Near this Book and Community Reviews on the book'southward primary page. Clicking on it will open up all the lists it has been placed on, as you can see below.

Page showing all the Goodreads lists of 'Confessions of a Shopaholic' by Sophie Kinsella

Books can work their way college upward a particular list if users vote for them. A listing on the best historical romances, for example, might have Gone with the Air current in top identify non because of its average Goodreads rating, but because of the number of people who have voted on that particular list.

These lists are besides purely customs-generated, meaning occasionally a book can stray onto a list where it doesn't belong.

In full general, all the same, Listopia is a bang-up way to navigate through all the books in a genre or subgenre, with a focus equally wide or narrow as you want it to be.

3. Browse Your Personalized Recommendations

Goodreads recommendations page, showing covers of recommended books

If y'all're a more than prolific Goodreads user, the algorithm is able to offer you personalized recommendations. These are based on the books you've shelved previously: the more than detailed your filing system, the more specific-to-yous the books will exist.

The page can exist accessed past clicking the Browse drop-down menu in the height bar, followed past Recommendations. If whatsoever of the books you lot see aren't what you're looking for, you can click the Not Interested tag under its cover to ensure information technology won't reappear.

On this folio, you can also solicit recommendations, via the Inquire for Recommendations option in the sidebar box. Type in a request and it will exist broadcast to your friends and the wider Goodreads community. Should you have forgotten the writer or title of a book y'all have read, this is also one mode of asking people for help.

Goodreads's Ask for Recommendations page, showing a box where you can type in requests.

4. Join a Goodreads Grouping (or xx)

Goodreads community page, showing featured groups.

Speaking of communities, joining a Goodreads group is a good way to socialize on the platform. As with lists, there are an nearly infinite number of groups for almost any subgenre or plot point imaginable. If you don't know where to beginning, there's a list of featured groups to give you ideas.

You can reach this page by clicking Communities > Groups.

Within groups, you tin can discuss with swain book-lovers, participate in buddy reads, and receive (or give) recommendations. Effectively, they function similar book clubs. In fact, many bodily volume clubs take their own Goodreads group folio.

five. Take Your Cue From the Option Awards Winners

Page showing Goodreads Choice Awards selections

Every year, Goodreads hosts the Choice Awards, which lets users vote for the best books of the twelvemonth in a range of genres. Nearly 5 million votes were cast in the last round. If you lot aren't certain which books are currently trending on readers' shelves, you can employ this page (accessed via the Browse dropdown menu) to find out.

It'due south very much a shorthand way of seeing what the well-nigh popular books are. For instance, Emily Henry's People We Meet on Vacation was the Selection Awards winner for the 2022 Romance category, with 88,000 votes. If you're someone who already keeps up with the latest viral reads, you may notice the Choice Awards feature a little less useful.

However, you can also run into which other books take been nominated, if you aren't interested in the winners. The archive goes back to 2011 (when just 600,000 votes were cast!) so you can also spend some time exploring which books people enjoyed reading in years gone past.

With the vast number of books stored and sorted on Goodreads, information technology would be almost impossible to have a TBR pile that's actually completed. Nor are these the only methods of finding book recommendations. If someone'south profile is set up to public, as most reviewers' are, you can surf their shelves to see what they're reading and pick upwardly ideas from at that place.

In that location are certainly culling sites out there worth trying, but Goodreads should probably be your first port of call when you desire to find your adjacent read.

6 Volume Recommendation Apps That'll Tell You What to Read Side by side

Find your next favorite book, series, or author with these recommendation apps for Android and iPhone.

Read Adjacent

About The Author