This article was originally published on January 31, 2019 on The New York Times by Gregory Cowles, senior editor of the Books desk for The New York Times.
When you work at The New York Times Book Review, you discover two things pretty quickly: 1) There are a lot of passionate readers out there, and 2) Most of them have no idea what to read next. We’re happy to help! Every week and every year we offer lists of recommended titles — handfuls of them, more books than anybody could reasonably carry home from the library in a single trip. Still, as the saying goes, if you teach a fish how to select its own books you’ve fed it for life, or something. With that in mind, here are some pointers for those of you who want to hone your reading habits but aren’t ready to commit to a Proust book club just yet. (We salute those people, but they don’t need our help.)