Where to Find Your Next Book

Don’t let your reading life ever suffer from a lack of motivation! Here are ways to make sure you don't have any reading droughts because you don't know what to read next.

One of the worst things for your reading life is to lose the drive of wanting to get to your next book. If you don’t have a good stack motivating you to get to the next read, you’ll run out of steam and stop reading.

Knowing where to look for books for your TBR (to be read) list is challenging though, and I am always looking for recommendations. Here is where my best book recommendations have come from.

Ask others what they’re reading

If you’re tired of talking about weather or sports at a party, ask someone if they’ve read anything interesting recently. I absolutely love talking about books, and it really helps me get to know someone else. Most of my quickest friendships form around talking about books, and I love reading a friend’s recommendation to talk about it later.

Goodreads

Goodreads is the one social media platform I absolutely love. Is it even a social media platform? It doesn’t have any ads or weird ways to overshare but is solely dedicated to keeping track of reading and reviews. I think I only have 7 friends on there because I like to use it very specifically, but I’ve been able to keep track of everything I’ve read for almost 8 years now which is amazing. Amazon has great ways of recommending books, but I like getting recommendations with trusted reviews on Goodreads also.

Podcasts and Websites

There are a couple of podcasts I’ve listened to or just look at the show notes in the past that have given good recommendations. Long-form interviews with authors are so helpful because you get to know the author, hear where they are coming from, and then widen out from there. I love Triggeronometry, Unherd, and Jordan Peterson who do a lot of interviews with contemporary authors.

Another podcast favorite is Kevin DeYoung, Justin Taylor, and Collin Hansen’s Life and Books and Everything. They ramble about sports, so I skip to their book recommendations, but DeYoung especially has consistently given me my best reads. I also recently discovered Joel Miller’s Book Review here on Substack and am a huge fan.

I have mixed feelings about Anne Bogel’s Modern Mrs. Darcy but I have gotten a ton of my modern reads from her and go back to her website all the time. I don’t think she’s a critical enough reader because she gives good reviews to some really trashy stuff, but she’s got a wide audience and I love that she’s getting people to read. I especially like some of her fiction lists and ideas for audiobooks. With these kinds of lists, I feel like it’s a menu where I might just choose one or two, and that’s helpful.

Home school or curriculum websites

Especially for fiction, it’s nice to review what classics you have missed or want to revisit as an adult. I have loved getting book ideas (for me and my kids) from Sonlight Curriculum or Memoria Press. Joel and I have been reading Roald Dahl books and the like out loud before we had kids up through now, so I don’t really consider much that’s too young for me.

Sarah Mackenzie’s Read-Aloud Revival is a great podcast and website to get ideas for the family or my own fiction, but I absolutely love her book lists.

Hang Out with Readers to Feel the FOMO

My best motivation for reading comes from being around serious readers. If you hang out with people who eat really healthy, you will probably start eating healthier, and similarly, if you hang out with people who spend hours a day reading, you will want in on the fun. If it’s hard to find people who read, join a book club or change who you read and listen to online. If you are listening to or reading about book discussions and reviews, you will start feeling the FOMO (fear of missing out) and will start reading.

Pick Up a Book About Reading

Sometimes you need to be reminded about the joys of reading, and these have been some of my favorite books when I need to get back into a groove.

Alan Jacob’s The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction convinced me to read by whim and not worry too much about what I should read.

Jacob’s Breaking Bread with the Dead is another inspirational read about why we should hang out with people from the past. Jacob is a fascinating writer and makes you realize who valuable you can be if you read well.

C.S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism gets into literary criticism but also just general wisdom on how to read well and the joys of reading.

Sarah Mackenzie writes about the importance of reading aloud in The Read-Aloud Family, similar to Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud Handbook or Honey for a Child’s/Teen’s Heart. All have great lists of books!

Others I haven’t yet read but probably will when I need inspiration:

Recovering the Lost Art of Reading by Leland Ryken and Glenda Mathes

On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior

How to Read Literature Like a Professor or others in this series by Thomas Foster

Be A Few Steps Ahead

Don’t let your reading life ever suffer from a lack of motivation! The best way to make sure you don’t have reading droughts is to stay a few steps ahead and look continuously for good books. If you have long TBR lists, you’ll always have lots to choose from depending on your mood and interest.