Matching Books to Your Mood via GoodReads

In general we match books based on why someone wants to read a book and not centered around what happens in the book. This is something I write about a lot. It is in my 10 Rules of Basic RA Service which links to this longer post on the topic. 

There are many ways to match books based on why someone would like a book, and their current mood is a great example. We see this overall with Gentle Reads and Horror having an increase in readership during these unprecedented times that we have been living through. Why? Because of mood.

As we live through this tumult many have turned to leisure experiences that either are more calming than real life for consolation OR to events that are way worse to make them feel better about the real world. Both are a reaction to real life "moods;" every different reactions but a mood based read is just what these readers are looking for.

There are a few ways to find mood based reads and I was reminded of one recently when Goodreads had this article on their blog:

84 New Mood-Based Reading Recommendations (Across Genres)

Those of us with serious reading habits are already aware of this basic truism: The books we choose to read are often dictated by mood.
 
As in: Sometimes you’re in the mood for a comforting read. Or a love story, or a funny story, or a story that will sweep you away. And sometimes you might be looking for all of the above! In fact, lots of dedicated readers keep multiple books on the nightstand, actual or virtual, for just this reason. 
 
Today’s specially curated collection is dedicated to this concept of mood-based reading recommendations. Our editors have personally sorted through the stacks to create 21 categories featuring specific reading moods and hankerings. It’s highly informal, extremely genre-agnostic, deeply unscientific, and a lot of fun. Scroll down and see for yourself.

Click here to read it in full. It is mostly focused on newish books, but you can also include backlist titles by searching for a specific mood on Goodreads and pull up user generated lists or use NoveList or Reddit to find more titles. 

Go to NoveList and use the appeal mixer to find titles or take a book your patrons really liked (with similar mood) and click on the appeal terms which best fit the mood for which they are searching. 

And for Reddit result, just use a search engine and do a natural language search the mood the patrons is looking for and add the word "books." So into Google type "books for a reader that want to be swept away reddit" and then use the lists to find a title.

However you do this, use it as a remind to ask people what kind o feeling they want from their next read rather than asking them about genre or plot elements. See also this post from last week when I wrote about this in more depth and use the connection between two books in completely different genres to prove a similar point.