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I have a love/hate relationship with recommending books to people. When I know nothing about a person’s reading preferences and they ask me “what should I read next,” I cringe. The pressure is on, but all I can do is tell them about a book I like. I also feel this way when I see these requests on online forums/pages. How in the world should I know what you should read next? Reading is deeply personal. I need to know you!
Most of my close friends are readers. And with each of them, I share something in common when it comes to reading, but there are books I loved that Casey will love, Lauren will like, and Katie will hate so I have to take what I know about each person and their reading into account.
I have learned what books each of them will likely enjoy (clearly, I have been wrong before) by listening to what books they liked in the past AND WHY. The why is huge.
In fact, Kate and I love so many of the same books; we share a favorite book The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. But Kate hates another one of my favorite books, Milkman by Anna Burns. She dnf’ed it twice. Kate is a plot driven reader. If the book is slow, if it is too character or theme driven, she’s not really interested.
At Recycle Read Repeat, we have customers who have been with us for years. This makes us so proud. But more than proud we are touched; it’s like we have new friends. We often write notes to them explaining why we have chosen a book - especially when it is not obvious. We await their feedback anxiously and figure out ways to humbly, or not so humbly, brag to each other when we nail the recommendation.
Just like with our friends, though, there are times when we don’t nail it. The feedback comes in and we see the terrifying 2 star review. But nothing changes (besides the humble brag step). Whether our customers send us 5 star feedback or 2 star feedback, we do the same thing - analyze the data and continue to build our nerdy book relationship with them!
- Ang
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