How to Find Your Next Book

If you’re like me, your taste in books varies with your moods, whims, and sock color. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a romantasy about a high school guy who falls in love with a girl he hates, and sometimes I’m in the mood for a real-world romance told from the perspectives of a middle-aged woman and a younger man. Given such specific tastes, it can be difficult to find enough books to satisfy my cravings.

Here’s how I search for books:

1. Book Communities: Search for book communities that recommend books. I like Reddit.com because it lets me join the communities and ask for recommendations. Here are a few communities that recommend books:
2. Plain AI Search: If I wanted to find a romantasy about a high school guy who falls in love with the girl he hates, first I’d try asking an AI. (Don’t hate on me. I’m just being honest.)
   SEARCH: romantasy about high school guy who falls in love with a girl he hates?
3. Simple FicTags Search: Search the FicTags list for some standard search tags.
   SEARCH: romantasy MF maleMC highSchool enemiesToLovers
4. Broaden the Search to find more recs:
   SEARCH: fantasy romance academy maleMC enemiesToLovers
5. Narrow the Search if there are a lot of recs:
   SEARCH: fantasy romance realWorld highschool maleMC firstLove noSpice mageLI weakToStrong
6. Filter Stuff You Don’t Want:
   Google lets you exclude pages with any words preceded by a minus sign (-).
   SEARCH: fantasy romance highschool maleMC -explicit -spicy -violence -“MM”
   NOTE: Putting a tag in quotes will keep it from matching tags embedded inside words. (We don’t want to eliminate pages with words like “bummer” which contains “mm”.)
7. Limiting searches to FicTag Reviews:
   Once FicTags become more widespread, you might want to try adding “FicTags” to your search to limit results to pages that have been deliberately tagged.
   SEARCH: fictags fantasy romance highschool maleMC -explicit -spicy -violence -“MM”