I’m shocked at the number of people my age who don’t read books for fun. Then again, some of my friends are shocked that I don’t listen to any audiobooks. And the debate remains: is it still reading a book if you hit play, heard every word, but never looked at a page? Did podcasts kill books?!
I’m kidding about that last part, because I’m pretty sure books, including audiobooks, are doing ok. Not cheap, these days, but then again nothing is. I’ve become pretty picky about what to read, knowing it’s an investment of a week or two, or three. But I read every day. I have been a Goodreads user for over a decade, logging books as to-read or read (and a star rating). Since It’s Amazon’s app, though, I’m happy to try something else.
Luckily, The Storygraph has gotten way better than it was when I first tried it a few years ago. It has every book I look up, which is great. I migrated my Goodreads data successfully, which was a pleasant surprise. But the best thing is the new personalized (‘powered by AI’) opinion associated with every book. I know, I know, more AI. But because they have my ratings from 355 books, here’s how it presented a book I was considering reading:
You’re clearly in a stretch where the locked-in, stripped-down question of what does it even mean to be human now? keeps grabbing you—think of the way Hum forced a mother to weigh her child against an AI future, or how The Bear pared existence down to a father, a daughter, and the silent woods after civilization. I Who Have Never Known Men works the same nerve: it traps its characters so completely that every flicker of memory, touch, or shared story becomes a life-or-death act of defining humanity, a pressure-cooker version of the isolation you just explored in Dinosaurs and the cagey weirdness of California. The only hesitation is that its single-sex captivity premise leans hard into a feminist allegory you’ve only lightly sampled (The End of Men rated a 3), so if you’re craving the wider emotional bandwidth of books like Shark Heart—where grief, love, and magical transformation all mingle—you might miss that variety.
Ask yourself whether you’re currently up for a spare, almost fable-like study in endurance and solidarity, or whether you’d rather wait until you’re in the mood for stark minimalism over multilayered worlds
No notes. That was perfect. No spoilers, contextualized this potential read with things from my past way better than my brain would have been able to recall. Huh. I ended up reading and loving this book, but I was going to read it regardless of The Storygraph AI personalization feature. That said, let’s run that AI feature through some other things I recently read. Here’s one for Dungeon Crawler Carl:
You’ve already read this and awarded it a perfect 5.0, so the book clearly scratches the same itch you’ve been chasing lately: the raucous, funny apocalypse of Feral Creatures (zombie raccoons and all), the satirical gig-economy edge of Bubble (where influencers monetize monster mayhem), and the high-stakes game logic of Emily Eternal (AI contestants racing cosmic deadlines). All of those recent reads share fast pacing, gallows humor, and a world that’s collapsing while the characters keep wisecracking, so you were demonstrably in the mood for a story that treats Armageddon like a darkly comic arena sport. What might still feel fresh here is the LitRPG scaffolding—loot boxes, leveling up, viewer metrics—which none of your other top-rated books center so explicitly, so weigh whether you want another dose of stat screens and audience votes or whether you’d like a break from gamified survival.I should pay money for The Storygraph. It’s worth it. Let’s do one more, because why not. Here’s how it personalized Tartufo for me:
You already devoured Tartufo and gave it a perfect 5, and when I look at your last few months it’s obvious why: the same chord struck in Shark Heart (a widowed woman watching her husband turn into a great white) and in Tartufo—grief braided with absurdity, hope, and a fierce attention to family and community—clearly resonated with you, and the food-centric, small-town Italian setting deepened that resonance the way the red-sauce nostalgia in Crying in H Mart did. What you might not consciously have been craving, but what Tartufo delivered, is a story where culture and identity are baked into every meal and every village quarrel, something you haven’t seen as vividly since Popisho’s magical Caribbean kitchen; if you’re still hungry for that immersive sense of place, Tartufo will feel like coming home. Ask yourself whether you want another book whose humor and heartache rise from the same soil of community, food, and belonging, because that’s exactly the lingering flavor Tartufo leaves behind.That whole judging a book by it’s cover? Well, maybe judge it by it’s cover and a data-backed personalized AI view from The Storygraph. Or better yet, and my personal favorite, a nice recommendation from a friend you trust. It’s me, I’m that friend.
Cover photo is from a recent trip I made to the Friends of the Library Booksale that happens a few times of year in Ithaca, New York. I’m lucky to live in a great place where something like this happens. My book collection comes from there and a few other places. Local bookshops (Odyssey, Buffalo Street Books, Autumn Leaves), ebay used books (where I snag 4 for like $14), Barnes and Noble Nook store, little free libraries, and of course, the Tompkins County Public Library.