As readers look to curl up with a proverbial good book this winter—and put their holiday bookstore gift cards to work—they’ll be faced with an obvious question: What should they pick up next?
“People find it much harder than you think, because there’s so much choice out there,” says Rachel Van Riel, founder and owner of the book recommendation website Whichbook. “Where do you start?”
Whichbook employs human readers to classify books along dimensions like moods, levels of violence and sexual content, attributes of the main characters, and length. It’s a process Van Riel says artificial intelligence can’t yet replicate, though it’s still quite mathematical in nature, with new hires guided in tuning their scores to the site’s standard. Then, Whichbook users can indicate their own current preferences with a set of sliders to find a set of books that match. Operating for free since 2003, at times thanks to funding from libraries, it’s designed to be a low-pressure way to discover interesting books.
“I think when it’s more playful, people take more risks, and that’s where they end up finding something that maybe suits them better,” Van Riel says. “It’s also very nonjudgmental—whatever you like, lots of sex, no sex at all, your choice.”
Whichbook shies away from recommending big bestsellers—since, as Van Riel says, people are generally already aware of them—but it can suggest books similar to current literary hits, or help people find books from particular parts of the world via an interactive map. It’s one of a growing number of websites, apps, and online communities helping people find something to read through various mixtures of algorithms and human insights.
Readers can take cues from influencers, like the loose community of literary-themed TikTok creators commonly called BookTok, or ask for personal recommendations on any of several subreddits set up for the purpose, like r/suggestmeabook or r/booksuggestions. Or they can take to book-based social networks, like Amazon’s Goodreads, The Storygraph, or Fable (recently acquired by Scribd ebook unit Everand), sharing suggestions and reviews with friends or friendly strangers. Each of those social sites also offers some automated recommendation features, as do many online bookstores, though the nuances of what makes a book a good read at a particular time can make the problem especially tricky.
“We began just from the idea that there isn’t a great book recommendation system,” says Sebastian Cwilich, cofounder and CEO of online bookseller Tertulia, which launched in 2022. “Even to this day, I don’t think us or anyone else have absolutely cracked it.”
