What Should I Read Next?

By FPL_AmyG

You’re desperate for a new book to read and you’ve read all the books by your favorite authors and depleted your friends’ book recommendations. You’ve read the bestseller lists and watched Book Tok, but it’s summer and they’re all checked out. As you look at the endless shelves of your local library, you internally scream “Now what?”

Lucky for you, Frisco Public Library has hundreds of curated lists of books, movies, and more! You can filter these lists by genre, subject, and audience. Best of all, you can immediately see if the book on the list is available for checkout and place holds on the ones you want.

Here are some tips and tricks for browsing these lists and some of my personal favorites.

Browsing Library Lists

To get started go to friscolibrary.com/explore, opens a new window.

This will take you to all our staff lists and blog posts (like the one you’re reading). You’ll then want to change your filters to match your reading mood.

To search our curated lists, you’ll want to change the Post Type filter to “Staff List.”

You’ll also want to change the Audience filter to match the reader. As an adult reader, I’d want to change the filter to “Adults” although I do like a good Teen read so if I’m in the mood for Young Adult books I’d select “Teens.”

Now to find the type of books I’m in the mood to read. There are three filters that are perfect for this. If I’m in the mood for fiction, the Genre filter can be helpful, while for nonfiction I might select Topic.

Now the Topic and Genre filter won’t catch lists that span several of these categories, or more specified categories like Psychological Thrillers or WWII History. This brings us to my favorite filter: Tags. Tags allow for more nuanced categorization and customization.

Some popular tags include Book to Screen, Read-Alikes, Book Club, Own Voice, Binge-Worthy, Back to Reading, Digital, and so much more. For example, book lists under the Book to Screen tag will include books that have been adapted to film. Read-Alikes take popular books and movies that people are raving about and suggest similar titles. Back to Reading would include books for those who don’t read a lot but want to get into reading or for those who are in a reading slump. They’re basically guaranteed good reads.

You’ll see a number out to the side of each tag; the more lists we have using that tag, the higher the number, and they’ll be listed first.

Favorite Reading Lists

Now that you know the ins and outs of exploring lists to find a book or movie that fits your mood, check out some of my favorite lists to jump start your reading list.