How We Choose the Books We Recommend

Why trust a book list at all?

Most book lists online are assembled by whoever happens to be selling the books. We wanted something different. We read widely, we argue about what works, and we put our names behind the choices. This page explains how we do it, so you know what a spot on an AltBook list actually means.

What we look for in a book

We start with a simple question: does this book do what it sets out to do, and does it do it well? A thriller should keep us turning pages. A memoir should tell us something true. A cookbook should produce food we want to eat twice.

We pay attention to craft. Sentences that carry their weight. Structure that holds. Characters who behave like people rather than props. We also pay attention to whether a book knows its reader. A book written for a specific person tends to land harder than one written for everyone.

We read the whole thing. That sounds obvious, but plenty of recommendations come from a jacket copy and a hunch. We finish the book before we speak about it.

How a book earns a spot on a list

A list has a job. "Novels to read after a hard year" is a different job from "the best debut fiction of the season." So the first thing we ask is whether a book fits the list, not just whether it is good in the abstract.

A great book can be wrong for a particular list, and a modest book can be exactly right. We would rather recommend the book that answers the reader's actual question than pad a list with famous titles that do not fit.

We also try to keep lists honest about range. If every book we suggest sounds the same, we have failed. So we look for spread: different voices, different presses, backlist next to new releases, the known name next to the one you have probably missed.

Why we write our own descriptions

We never paste in the publisher's blurb. Marketing copy is written to sell, and it tends to promise more than the book delivers. Our descriptions are written to help you decide whether this book is for you right now.

That means we tell you what the book feels like to read, who it will suit, and where it might not be your thing. If a novel is slow to start but worth the wait, we say so. If a nonfiction book is excellent but assumes you already know the field, we say that too. A good description saves you from the wrong book as much as it points you to the right one.

How we handle taste versus quality

These two things get tangled all the time, so we keep them separate on purpose.

Quality is about how well a book is made. We can recognize a well-built book even when it is not to our personal taste. Taste is about what we happen to love, and it is not a measure of worth. A beautifully written literary novel and a fast, generous genre novel can both be excellent at being what they are.

When we recommend, we try to be clear about which lens we are using. Sometimes we are saying "this is a strong book by any standard." Sometimes we are saying "this is not for everyone, but if you like this kind of thing, you will love it." Both are honest recommendations. They are just different promises.

What we will not do

We do not recommend a book because someone paid us to. We do not inflate a rating to keep a relationship warm. And we do not pretend to have read something we skimmed.

We read a lot of books that never make it onto a list. That is the point. The list you see is the small part that survived the reading. When we hand you a recommendation, we want it to carry the weight of everything we set aside to get there.