You’ve turned the last page of your book. Maybe you read the acknowledgements, the author bio, reread the blurbs on the back now that you have more context for them. Maybe you let it fall heavily on your coffee table and sigh a satisfied (or infuriated, or disappointed, or giddy) sigh. Maybe you immediately return the ebook in your library app, or add it to a stack of books by the door to take back to the library or put on a free book shelf. Maybe you enjoy the particular sensation of finding the book its new home on your shelves, giggling a little if it lives in between two particularly unlikely neighbors.
Whatever your end-of-book rituals, if you’re a regular reader, you’ll eventually arrive at one question:
What do I read next?
And sometimes, this choice feels impossible.
Ok, yes, I’m being a little dramatic. Choosing what book to read next isn’t difficult, exactly. In a very real way it can be a privilege, whether you’re choosing from a virtually endless supply of books online (whether to check out from the library or buy or download a free classic) or an overflowing TBR shelf/stack/bookcase/room-eating pile. Many of us are spoiled for choice. It’s not a problem, but it is a real question: How can I pick one books when I want to read everything, absolutely everything, all at once?
Occasionally the choice is clear. Maybe a long-awaited sequel has finally arrived. (Maybe it’s time to re-read all the previous books in a series before the long-awaited sequel arrives.) Maybe the hold you’ve been waiting on for three months finally comes up at the library. Maybe this week, a new book came out and you absolutely 100% are going to start reading it the minute you get home from the store with it.
It’s been a while since this last one happened to me, but not for lack of enthusiasm. For some time, there’s been a distinct lack of trips to the bookstore, but that hasn’t stopped me from ordering books. They arrive, and I love their shiny little book faces, and I think about reading them next, and then I feel guilty about the books I got last time I ordered books and how I haven’t read them yet, and the next thing you know I’ve picked up the Switch again; in Breath of the Wild, Link only reads books to pick up some hot gossip about side quests, and I’ve got a couple of those left to find.
Like I said: Not a real problem. But sometimes it’s good to have a way to shortcut the part of one’s brain that absolutely does not want to deal with making yet another decision in a day that’s been full of them, or a brain that is threatening tears if it can’t read at least three new books at once. I’ve heard a lot of approaches over the years, and tried a few of my own. Did they work? Well. I’ll get to that.
Some tactics you might try:
The classic switch: A new book and then an old one. (Your choice whether “old” means “been on the pile more than X amount of time” or “published some years ago.”) Or a paperback and then a hardcover. A standby of those of us who don’t want to feel we’re behind on what’s new and being discussed online, but also want to keep up with the things we’ve always meant to read. I’m always tempted by this kind of mental organization. Maybe up next I’ll read Matt Bell’s Appleseed followed by Sofia Samatar’s The Winged Histories, or Helen Oyeyemi’s Peaces followed by Terry Pratchett’s Mort.
The extreme switch: A variation on new/old, but slightly more extreme: Read the oldest book on your shelf or list or pile, then the newest, and make your way inwards from there. Presumably this would lead to some fascinating changes in pace and tone and topic.
The reading schedule: You make a list of what you’re going to read next, for X number of books, and you stick to it. Those who can do this have wills of steel. I can’t do it. Something might come up! I might see something I’d forgotten about buried at the bottom of a pile! It may turn out that the books I planned to read just plain don’t go well one after another!
I’ve heard tell of this being successful but have never witnessed it myself.
The genre hopper: A basic rule: never read two books of the same genre in a row. If you want to get tricksy with it, you can try to make the books follow after one another in some thematic way. If you want to put less thought into it, you just read something not SFF after an SFF book, something fiction after nonfiction. If you get very ambitious and sort your TBR by genre, it simplifies things even further. (You can also use this sorting task to further put off having to make a decision about which book to open next.)
The randomizer: Close your eyes and jab your finger at the pile/your screen, and pick based on where it lands. Personally I find this is a very good way to determine what I don’t want to read next, as it’s almost never the book on which my jabbing finger lands. Your mileage may vary. (A variant on this: Read whatever the library hold system brings up, in the order they arrive. This is very good for those times when you just really, really don’t want to make any decisions.)
A sense of obligation: Did your friend give you a book some years back that you haven’t read? Did you pick up a novel because someone you work with recommended it? It’s never too late to actually read those books and then send the person who gave/told you about them a note about it. If you’d been feeling a little guilty, here is a simple means of relief. If you don’t like the book in question, you can opt never to say a word and just enjoy that there is one less book on your shelf.
Plain old curiosity: If you have a burning desire to read that one really popular book that would usually not be your cup of tea, but everyone is talking about it and you just want to know what the deal is? Do it now. They won’t be talking about it forever, and if you miss that window, you’re just going to look at that book later and wonder why you thought you wanted to read it.
Let someone else decide for you: It is very likely that your friendly local bookseller lives for those moments when someone says “I don’t know what I want to read next.” If your local store is open, go in (masked!) and ask; if not, email them! They’ll probably ask what you usually like to read, what you liked best about those books, whether you’re feeling fiction or non, and what you’re in the mood for. And then they will work some magic.
All of these tactics are well and good and can be useful, but I don’t use any of them very often, This isn’t because I’m a very decisive person (I most certainly am not), but because not one of them can account for the nebulous, often indescribable, hard to pin down factors that account for so much of my book choosing: how I feel, and how I want to feel.
A book can be comfort or horror, romance or spite, anger, delight, hope, despair, dreaminess, practicality, optimism, and all of those mashed-up feelings that don’t sum up neatly into a single word. Feelings can be the hardest thing to get from a book’s back cover copy or blurbs or reviews, which tend to lean on plot and succinct praise—and even if the text says it’ll make you cry or miss your grandma or want to go save the world single-handedly, there’s no guarantee that’s true for you like it was for whoever made those claims. The alchemy is precise and individual, and unpredictable to boot.
And then there’s the other challenge: knowing your own feelings. Sometimes that’s the hardest part. I stand in front of the bookshelves, or look over my “to-read” tags in the library app, and I simply have no idea what it is I want. I want something. I want a specific feeling, something as exact as the word petrichor or the shape of a trillium, but there’s no word for it, no genre equivalent, no cover design style that can tell me if it’s in a given book.
Do I want to hang out with a protagonist who drives me delightfully up the wall or one who I want to be friends with? If I read a book about a successful author, am I in a place where I’ll feel inspired, or envious? Do I want the comfort of the familiar or the delight of something entirely new? Do I want to be challenged or cushioned? What do I want to learn? Where am I, right now, and where will the book meet me—or take me?
Sometimes it’s easy. In the chaos of last year, N.K. Jemisin’s The City We Became was exactly what I wanted to read while I was worrying about friends in New York and the city as a whole. Mona Awad’s Bunny let me transform all the biting, nasty feelings I didn’t know what to do with. I spent New Year’s Day reading Suzanna Clarke’s Piranesi, which was the perfect book to have as company while walking into an uncertain year.
But when choosing is hard, it doesn’t help to force it. Take all the time you want. Read the first ten pages of a dozen books. Stack five options up in a pile and try to convince yourself to start the one on top; if it’s not right, move on, until you’ve found what you want. Distract yourself for a while with all those bookmarked articles you’ve been meaning to get around to. Allow for the process.
Or just pick from a list or pull a book off the shelf at random. Totally up to you.
Molly Templeton lives and writes in Oregon, and spends as much time as possible in the woods. Sometimes she talks about books on Twitter.
I put books on hold at the library and read whatever comes up!
Right now I have the Binti trilogy, Machinehood, and Good Omens. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is next.
Oh, the eternal dilemma. One of the best dilemmas to have, really.
I keep a weather eye on my library books via their website. Anything that has holds and needs to be read by the next due date gets upped in the queue. Or anything that’s been renewed more than twice, those I take a long hard look at and decide whether I really want to read it or not.
I do the genre-hopping, alternating SFF with historicals or contemporaries. I also try not to read more than two YA books in a row lest I crumble away into dust.
I keep a running list of Books I Own That I Really Need to Read, and if there’s a lull in library books, I go through it, find the book I’ve had the longest, and give it its shot.
And sometimes I look at the world and reach for something I’ve already read ten times, or a cozy mystery with puppies, or a romance with a happy ending guaranteed.
I feel that “Old Favorites” should be listed as well. One does not always have to read something new (to you). Revisiting books you’ve already read is very rewarding. Also, if you have reading rules in place, as I do, to protect your sleep schedule, it’s good to have an old favorite on the nightstand. New books are not allowed in the bed room.
I normally use calibre’s “pick a random book” function with unread books selected.
It hasn’t happened yet, but if the book that comes up by random is one that I don’t want to read, clearly it will just get removed from my TBR pile.
(My TBR pile in calibre is currently 819 and falling…)
Good article and good timing! I was in the “What to read next?” situation a couple of days ago. I’m not going to the library (yet) and rarely order books so I rely on the free online option when there’s a book I want to read/reread but don’t have, plus my own books. And for what to read next . . . sometimes it’s my mood, sometimes it’s what I haven’t read lately, and sometimes I stand in my home office just looking around and my eyes will light on a book and get a “Oh I need to read that” vibe . . . and so right now I’m rereading Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.
I tend to be a genre-hopper, and I generally have so much on my library hold list that it’s never a problem picking from the ones that have already come in! In fact a lot of the time the deciding factors are “Which one is due first?” and “Can I renew that one again or not?”
I’m a bit relieved to be such an enthusiastic genre-hopper, because it takes a lot of the uncertainty out of it. What I might be in the mood for changes a bit from day to day anyway, but one of the biggest influences on that is wanting something distinct from whatever the previous book or two or five were. It’s half because I like the variety, and half because reading similar books too close together means I later start confusing them in memory, and that annoys the heck out of me.
Only very occasionally do I make an exception, and that’s when I find an earlier book in a pair/trilogy/series so compelling that I race to the library to grab the next one.
Using any sort of tactics feels like forcing it to me, so usually it’s just what do I feel like reading. The only time I know for sure what I’m reading next is when I’m rereading a series from the beginning, and if I’m rereading a series I usually intend to start at the beginning and going through the whole thing, but I might throw in a couple of shorter reads in between books to take a break.
I usually pick books based on this kind of aura surrounding the book made up of my expectations based on the genre, the cover art, the author, the blurb, and whether I decide to read a book depends on whether my expectations of it match my mood. Usually I find it matches enough that I can get into the book but it makes picking up new-to-me books by new-to-me authors more difficult because books by previously read authors have a stronger aura, I’m more certain of what I can expect.
I find my tastes vary by season. Shorter, more adventure-oriented stories in the summer, and longer, more thoughtful books in the winter.
I don’t think I’ve ever used or needed to use any of these methods (except the genre hopper one in small quantities). Lately, because my budget for buying books is a lot less than the cost of all the books I want, I’ve been borrowing from my library more. Every now and then I do a binge requesting session and put 10 or so books on hold (some with long wait lists, some with no wait list). When they come, I’ll read what comes first. Or if multiple come at once, I’ll generally read the one I think I’ll be able to finish the fastest (so I don’t run out of time stuck on a book I find hard to get through). If I really liked the last book I read, I’ll try to read a slightly different genre so I don’t compare them and find one wanting.
Of course, if I’m reading a series with all of them to hand, I’ll read them back to back and thoroughly enjoy being immersed in the same world for an extended period of time.
While biding my time waiting for the next Sanderson, Muir, Lyons, etc. I am reading every Hugo winning novel in order of year won. I also read along with the Wheel of Time post, and if something catches my attention that also.
I use an app called Likewise. It gives you AI recommendations, or you can ask people in the community section. Works well for just saving recs I get from friends too
I always have difficulty choosing what to read next, so I often use this method: when I have a shelf full of books (like now) that I have purchased or want to re-read, I arrange them by length and read the shortest one first, then the next, and so on. That way, no indecision is involved and I get from one title to the next more quickly. Of course, if there’s a book in the bunch I really want to get to, I’ll violate this system.
I’ve been known to set aside my current read for the sequel to a series I love.Mostly if I’m reading fantasy i stick to that genre but I also switch to romance or science fiction on a whim too.
I’d like to advocate for talking to your librarian in addition to your bookseller! One of our specialties is readers’ advisory, and many of us have literally taken graduate level courses in figuring out how to help people find their next read. If you don’t feel safe going in to the library yet, try their email service or social media. Most are very happy to answer questions there. Plus you can download ebooks or audiobooks – and at our library we still have curbside pick-up available for patrons as well. If your local library is full of jerks (it happens) you can always talk to other libraries – most are happy to help anyone find information whether they are a local patron or not.
I am fortunate to live in a metropolitan area where libraries have reciprocal agreements so I currently have 7 library cards and 20 books on hold.
I add books as they are mentioned in Tor discussions like this one (I just added Binti based on @2’s comment) or other review sites. I read them in the order that they’re available from the library.
Oddly enough, the last two I read were The City We Became and Piranesi … and Bunny was just recommended to me over the weekend. Bunny it is!
I am sometimes random in picking the next book and sometimes not.
I do tend to read a lot of new books in the late fall and early winter, right on schedule for voting in the Goodreads Choice Awards, rating Compton Crook candidates and making Hugo nominations.
Books from favorite authors (e.g. anything from Seanan McGuire) tend to get read shortly after acquisition.
Every so often I will pull things from the bottom of one of my TBR piles, or focus on a certain pile.
And of course keeping up with Tor.com rereads (e.g. the Terry Pratchett Book Club) helps drive choices too.
I read quickly when I get immersed in a book, and I learned early not to read through a whole series or author at once, or I wouldn’t have something I knew was good in my to be read pile. So I switch to other genres or at least authors each time. I also mentally categorize books as quick reads or slow reads. Quick reads just flow and hard to put down. Slow reads you need to concentrate on and sometimes need to stop and think about. So my decision on the next book is what I’m feeling like at the moment , whether I want a quick or slow read, and that isn’t like the last book.
enjoyed this :)
Last year I was rendered almost catatonic by needing to make a choice–three of my holds came in to the library all at once: Harrow the Ninth, A Memory Called Empire, and The Tyrant Baru Cormorant. Ultimately after much angst I went with Harrow the Ninth because Gideon had been so amazing, but what a tough decision!
At work, I filled up my drawers and cupboards with books and had a bowl filled with scraps of paper with the titles on them. In order to ensure I didn’t cheat and choose the most recent addition, I had random people in the office pick my next book for me to read during lunch.
That, of course, ended with the pandemic.
Recently, I’ve started theme months: Graphic Novels, Classics, Science Fiction, Film/TV, Zombies (this, coincidentally, will happen in October).
I try not to have too many library books in waitspace because I know more than one will come up at the same time. I also keep a Pratchett and a Courtney Milan in reserve for those horrible days when nothing tastes good (sometimes after running into nonfiction books that Just Sit There or too many new authors that don’t click with me). I also have an emergency paperback in the car just in case, but I usually leave it alone for now, since I don’t care as much about Herod Agrippa as Robert Graves clearly does.
Awhile back I got sick of tryin to decide what to read next, so I put all the books on my list into the app Random Name Picker. I still read whatever I want to read next, but if I ever can’t decide, I let the app do the choosing for me.