As someone who reads a decent amount, I often get asked for book recommendations. Now, this process works pretty well for me, and it works with movies too, except in those last few steps, but we’ll get to those in a second.
- Ask if the requester is looking for something good, or something fun?
These are two different qualities. I can’t stress this enough. There are things that are of high quality but are about as enjoyable to consume as a bucket of nails. The example I always reference is the movie the Pianist which I felt was very good, but not a pleasant or fun experience that I will ever repeat. Sometimes a person wants to be entertained, not challenged. Establish that up front. - Determine Genre Preferences/Requirements
Depending on the reader, this can get quite specific. I see requests on Reddit for weird stuff like “books with wearable computers.” - Get a couple of top authors or books.
Establish a baseline for what they like. Look, someone who is a huge fan of Stephen King is probably not going to want to read… well, I can’t think of something here that you won’t immediately find a counter-example of to prove my point. But people have tastes. Figure out what those tastes are, even if they aren’t yours. - COMPUTE
This is the part where you take the constraints they gave you above and you run through stuff you’ve read or know people have written, etc. I give myself bonus points in this game if I can recommend a book by someone I personally know who is new and building their career over some classic multi-year best seller from the 50s. I’m looking at you, people whose answer to every question is “Heinlein!“Hopefully you’ll come up with at least one title that matches the requirements, If not, go to step 5. - If all else fails, just suggest something by Neil Gaiman or Terry Pratchett. (For films, default to Hitchcock.)
Everybody loves Neil! And at this point, there’s a Terry Pratchett book about every major subject. Like economics? here’s a Pratchett book. Like the postal service? Here’s a Pratchett book about that.If even that fails to take, I guess there’s always Tom Clancy.
I’m not a picky reader. Just recommend me a book and I’ll put it on my list of books I want to read.
While this is similar to my own process of recommending, your step 1 suggests “good” and “entertaining” are mutually exclusive qualities. I know that’s not your intent, but that’s how it reads.
And I’d suggest that step 3 is more useful if you find out what they hate or can’t handle in books, rather than what they like. It’s hard to get people to explain coherently what they like about the things they like, and if they took something different away from a work than you did, you could go off down totally the wrong road. Following your example — someone who loved King’s Dark Tower series for its metafictional aspects should get different recommendations than someone who loved the series for its universe-crossing stuff. But people tend to know what it is that they don’t like, and it’s also useful for avoiding triggers; someone who can’t handle rape shouldn’t get a recommendation for Deerskin even if they love remixed fairytales. Someone who hates Wolf Hall because they hate novels written in present tense would be better served by a rec for Kindred than for Bright Lights, Big City, even if they say they’re looking for an intimate depiction of a particular moment in time. If you see what I mean.
Indeed, I intended to clarify that point and then forgot as I forged ahead with the rest of the steps. I’ll blog more clearly next time, thanks!