With the abundance of literature available, sometimes finding the following book can be daunting and sometimes prevent us from reading. I know I have an issue called ‘reader block’, when there’s too much choice available and I’m not in the mood to spend hours of research trying to find the ideal next book. Luckily for all of us, and something I believe that’s quite underutilized, is using ChatGPT to help suggest new books.

For the past few months, I have used ChatGPT to recommend my next books almost exclusively, and I have to say, it has been better recommended than some of the opinions I have found online. With ChatGPT, we bookworms can finally use AI to help find that next book, and spend less time searching and more time reading.

Within this guide, I will show you my process of finding new books using ChatGPT prompts that I will also share. We will look at how it recommends books based on your favourite authors, on the type of mood you’re currently in, or by specific period or length if that is what you are after.

1. By Genre or Mood:

By starting with the basics, we can easily ask ChatGPT to recommend some books based on our particular mood or genre. Some examples of particular prompts you may ask are: “Recommend some historical fiction novels” or “I’m in the mood for a tense thriller, any suggestions“. This can be used just as a template, but the beauty of this prompt is that it can be adapted for almost anything. If you’re wondering what ChatGPT uncovers, look below:

Of course, the beauty of ChatGPT is that you can continue tweaking the original prompt without having the fear of annoying anyone. Think that the above suggestions are too common, or do the suggestions provided have books you have already read? You can easily adapt the prompt to suggest even more books.

This can keep going on until you find something that interests you another handy aspect of doing this prompt is that each recommendation it provides will let you know a quick synopsis of the book, so you have a rough idea of what you’re getting into if you do choose to read ChatGPTs recommendation.

If you still feel that the little snippet of the book is not enough, you can always ask ChatGPT to expand on it (and you should also specify it to be spoiler-free, just in case).

2. By Theme or Topic:

If you’ve recently finished a great book based on a topic or theme you’d love to explore more, but have no idea where to start, you can always ask ChatGPT to suggest a variety of books based on a particular theme or topic you’re currently craving. Let’s say you’ve recently read a great book that’s based on the concept of time travel, and you really enjoyed it. Asking ChatGPT to ‘recommend books based on the concept of time travel’ could yield some great suggestions.

Of course, we can apply what we have learnt in our initial point of asking ChatGPT to expand on books that might have caught your eye or ask it to keep suggesting more recommendations if the initial list has books you’ve already read or books that don’t speak to you.

3. By Skill Development or Learning:

The beauty of using ChatGPT is that it can not only be used for recommending fiction books, but it can also quite handily help you out if you’re learning a new topic, and want to explore different books or even authors around it. Of course, this shouldn’t be taken as gospel and the non-fiction recommendations that ChatGPT provides can be off sometimes, but it can be a perfect starting point to kickstart your interest, encourage you to learn more and just find more authors that you can explore. For example, you can ask ChatGPT to ‘recommend me some books on quantum physics for beginners’.

Conclusion:

Navigating the vast world of literature can be quite overwhelming. However, in this digital age, with tools like ChatGPT at our disposal, the process of finding our next favourite book has become incredibly easier. Whether you are chasing the thrill of a new genre, diving deeper into one of your favourite themes or embarking on learning some new, ChatGPT can act as a reliable assistant. By using some of the prompts outlined in this guide, we no longer have to suffer from ‘reader block’ or spend hours searching online forums and reviews to pick that next book. Now we can spend less time searching and more time reading. Get yourself a hot drink and a cosy spot and see what you can discover.

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