These sites and apps will help you assemble the perfect holiday reading list

As readers look to curl up with a proverbial good book this winter—and put their holiday bookstore gift cards to work—they’ll be faced with an obvious question: What should they pick up next? 

“People find it much harder than you think, because there’s so much choice out there,” says Rachel Van Riel, founder and owner of the book recommendation website Whichbook. “Where do you start?” 

Whichbook employs human readers to classify books along dimensions like moods, levels of violence and sexual content, attributes of the main characters, and length. It’s a process Van Riel says artificial intelligence can’t yet replicate, though it’s still quite mathematical in nature, with new hires guided in tuning their scores to the site’s standard. Then, Whichbook users can indicate their own current preferences with a set of sliders to find a set of books that match. Operating for free since 2003, at times thanks to funding from libraries, it’s designed to be a low-pressure way to discover interesting books.  

“I think when it’s more playful, people take more risks, and that’s where they end up finding something that maybe suits them better,” Van Riel says. “It’s also very nonjudgmental—whatever you like, lots of sex, no sex at all, your choice.”  

Whichbook shies away from recommending big bestsellers—since, as Van Riel says, people are generally already aware of them—but it can suggest books similar to current literary hits, or help people find books from particular parts of the world via an interactive map. It’s one of a growing number of websites, apps, and online communities helping people find something to read through various mixtures of algorithms and human insights.  

Readers can take cues from influencers, like the loose community of literary-themed TikTok creators commonly called BookTok, or ask for personal recommendations on any of several subreddits set up for the purpose, like r/suggestmeabook or r/booksuggestions. Or they can take to book-based social networks, like Amazon’s Goodreads, The Storygraph, or Fable (recently acquired by Scribd ebook unit Everand), sharing suggestions and reviews with friends or friendly strangers. Each of those social sites also offers some automated recommendation features, as do many online bookstores, though the nuances of what makes a book a good read at a particular time can make the problem especially tricky. 

“We began just from the idea that there isn’t a great book recommendation system,” says Sebastian Cwilich, cofounder and CEO of online bookseller Tertulia, which launched in 2022. “Even to this day, I don’t think us or anyone else have absolutely cracked it.” 

Tertulia began with the idea of building machine learning models to generate recommendations based on literary conversations then happening on Twitter. That approach became less viable once Elon Musk acquired the site, now X, since book-related posting on the site “dramatically dropped” and the new ownership significantly raised prices to access such data, Cwilich says.  

Its recommendations are still fairly data-driven, albeit more hand-curated, with the company tracking bestsellers, critical reviews, celebrity book clubs, and recommendations posted on Instagram. Much of that information is organized into a database for easy access by Tertulia’s editorial team. “I think we do a really, really good job of unpacking a particular micro-genre or a particular author that’s kind of trending or in the cultural zeitgeist,” says cofounder Lynda Hammes.  

Tertulia also offers a sprawling set of other features, from recommendations by authors from poet and novelist Patricia Lockwood to actor and memoirist Lukas Gage, an integration with online book club community Belletrist, and a newly launched platform for authors to quickly build their own websites.  

Of course, it’s also a bookstore, complete with a paid membership co-op program, and all those sources of book recommendations naturally help sell books, much like the staff recommendations bookstores large and small have long offered visitors. Even bookselling giant Amazon, in addition to personalized recommendations, offers editorial recommendations through its Amazon Book Review subsite. 

“We’re all very passionate readers, so we really try to keep our fingers on the pulse of what’s trending and what’s interesting,” says Amazon’s senior editor Lindsay Powers, who is also a published author.  

The site isn’t simply recapitulating a list of Amazon bestsellers or titles highlighted by publishers, says Powers, whose work includes compiling monthly nonfiction and history lists for the site. She and her colleagues collectively read thousands of books each year, with Powers alone reading more than 300, and are given considerable freedom in their choices, she says. The site recently published a set of Best of 2025 lists, as well as holiday gift recommendations. 

Since 2013, Amazon has also owned the online reading community Goodreads, which enables readers to log and share their own reading, see updates from friends, and access a mix of algorithmic recommendations and editorial content. “One day, you might see a book recommendation from a friend in your newsfeed,” says managing editor Cybil Wallace. “The next, you might see an editorial roundup that really appeals to you. We just want to make sure there are lots and lots of different ways for you to find a book that you love.” 

Goodreads has almost two decades worth of data about what people like to read, and even editorial write-ups are heavily driven by what the stats show. “We really pride ourselves in looking to our reading community to inform what we write about,” Wallace says.

Other sites use their own data-driven approaches to connect people to books and help them track their reading, sometimes also attracting users who prefer minimizing their ties to industry giant Amazon. The StoryGraph, often compared to Goodreads, offers tracking features along with AI-driven recommendations and filters to find new reads. And PipeRead, another startup, recently launched with its own AI-powered recommendations, presenting suggested books in a Tinder-style swipe interface.  

Fable, which launched in 2021 as a platform for online book clubs and now hosts more than 100,000 clubs for almost four million users, also includes an AI recommendation agent, as well as fitness tracker-style visualizations of individual reading habits that are often shared on social media. But the platform, which was acquired by Scribd’s digital book division Everand in 2025, still focuses heavily on person-to-person recommendations, whether that’s through small-scale private book clubs, sprawling public clubs that can have thousands of members, or recommendations from celebrities like LeVar Burton or Paris Hilton.  

There’s a big crossover between Fable and BookTok, which makes sense with 90% of Fable users younger than 40, says Kim Allee, marketing director for Fable and Everand. And a recent survey the company conducted found personal recommendations still remain one of the most popular ways to find something good to read. 

“I think finding that right book at the right moment from the right person means you’re going to have a deeper, kind of more human experience actually engaging with that book,” says Allee. “And I think especially in this day and age, that’s something that people really explicitly value.” 

Some book recommendation sites still rely entirely on human expertise. Five Books, launched in 2009, offers readers what it calls “the best books on everything,” presented through interviews with various experts where they’re asked to discuss their areas of interest and five books from the field. The site, says cofounder and editor Sophie Roell, was inspired by the classic British university system, where tutors assign a list of books to study.  

It has recently featured a noir fiction list curated by activist and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow, a list of books on World War II chosen by military historian Antony Beevor, and a set of five books on Jesus selected by Oxford theologian Robert Morgan. Their expertise means their recommendations can carry more weight than casual posts on social media. Morgan, for instance, has read more than 100 books on Jesus, says Roell. 

“I thought he’s a reasonable person to choose the best books on Jesus, because if he’d only read seven, then, quite frankly, I’m not interested in his top five,” she says. “But if he’s read 100, that’s good—that’s a pretty good filtering mechanism.”  

The site takes donations but is primarily funded by Amazon affiliate commissions, meaning its recommendations also need to appeal to readers enough to sell books and keep the business afloat. One advantage is that many visitors come to the site through Google, searching for books to buy on a specific subject rather than seeking a general-purpose recommendation. 

“It’s just such different strokes for different folks, really, with books,” Roell says, “which makes recommendations very hard.”

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