How do you choose what to read next?

Finishing a good book leaves a small vacuum. You stand in front of the shelf, or scroll through a list of forty titles you saved at some point, and nothing feels right. Choosing badly can lead to a fortnight of half-hearted reading. Choosing well can carry you for months.

Here is how we approach it.

Keep the to-read list short and alive

A list of two hundred books is not a reading plan; it is a monument to good intentions. A useful to-read list is:

• Short. Ten to twenty titles you are genuinely excited about now.
• Pruned. Every few months, delete anything that no longer makes you curious. You are allowed to change your mind.
• Varied. A mix of lengths, moods and kinds, so that whatever state you are in, something fits.

Keep the long "someday" list somewhere else, out of sight.

Choose by mood, then by merit

The best book in the world is the wrong book if you start it when you are exhausted and want comfort. Before picking, ask:

• How much attention do I have? A demanding novel needs evenings; a tired week calls for something short or funny.
• What do I want to feel? Swept away, amused, consoled, challenged.
• Where will I be reading? A beach, a commute, a long train journey, a dark winter evening.

Mood first, then pick the best book that fits it. That alone prevents most abandoned books and reading slumps.

Follow the threads

The most satisfying way to choose is to let one book lead to the next. Every book contains exits:

• The author. Loved one novel? Read another, or their essays, letters or a biography.
• The subject. A novel set in Naples leads to a history of the city, or a cookbook from the region.
• The influences. Many writers wear their reading openly. Follow them back.
• The people around it. Translators, editors and friends of authors often lead somewhere interesting.

An example: Sarah Bakewell's How to Live (2010), a life of Montaigne built around twenty answers to its title question, per Wikipedia, leads naturally into Montaigne's own Essays, first published in 1580; see where to start with Montaigne. From there, the essay form leads anywhere you like. Reading this way builds a kind of personal map, and each book arrives with context and curiosity already attached.

Read against your habits

Most of us have grooves: one genre, one country, one century, authors who look like us. Every few books, choose something outside them on purpose.

• A different country. Especially in translation.
• A different century. A classic if you read contemporary fiction, or a new novel if you live in the nineteenth century.
• A different shelf. Crime if you read literary fiction, or the reverse; see literary vs genre fiction.
• A different form. Poetry, essays, a graphic novel, a play.

You will not love all of them. But the ones you do love will be discoveries, which is the best feeling a reader can have.

Use other people

• Ask one specific person. "What have you loved recently?" works better than general recommendations.
• Use your library. Browsing the shelves, and borrowing freely, takes the risk out of trying something new; see whether it's worth joining a library.
• Talk to booksellers. A good one will ask what you last loved and why.

A note on the pile itself

Italo Calvino opens If on a Winter's Night a Traveller (1979) with a funny chapter about the experience of reading, addressed directly to you, the Reader, as Wikipedia describes. It is a reminder that wondering what to read is part of the pleasure, not a problem to solve. Our page on If on a Winter's Night has more.