Not long ago, Jennifer Harlan, an editor at The New York Times Book Review, walked into Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Ky., her hometown. On a set of shelves sat several books, their covers wrapped in brown butcher paper.
Scrawled on the paper covers were vague, brief and intriguing descriptions (think: “quirky,” “star-crossed love” or “spicy and spellbinding”). Because their real covers were hidden, the books could have been recent best-sellers, literary classics, fantasy thrillers or something else entirely. To Ms. Harlan, buying a book from the display felt like going on a blind date.
She had noticed similar displays at other bookstores, including at the Strand bookstore in New York City.
“There’s this element of surprise and delight,” Ms. Harlan said. She began to think: Could The Book Review offer a similar experience for its readers?
So, in January, Ms. Harlan met with Aliza Aufrichtig and Rebecca Lieberman, editors on The Times’s Digital News Design team, to explore ideas. As they discussed the possibilities of a digital book recommendation tool, Ms. Lieberman brought up her own favorite part of in-store browsing: the staff-pick displays with personal notes from employees.
What the trio came up with is a sort of hybrid of the two.
The Book Review’s recommendation quizzes, as the editors call them, ask readers four questions (about a preferred vibe, setting, length and plot preference). Readers are suggested one title based on their answers.
The first recommendation quiz dealt romance novels and was published in February. The second, published this month, was designed to give the reader a book to push through the stubborn coattails of winter and into the warmth of spring.
In the age of automated algorithms and artificial intelligence, Ms. Aufrichtig said it was important to note that the quiz uses neither. All titles are chosen by editors at The Times. The romance quiz is loaded with 32 books, meaning 32 possible outcomes. The latest quiz has 16 titles from two reading lists compiled by the reporter Calum Marsh this year: 10 Books to Beat the Winter Cold and 10 Winter Reads for Cold Nights.
The quiz is a way to digitally “recreate that table at the front of the store,” Ms. Harlan said. It also aligns with one of the goals for The Book Review this year: to find novel, interactive ways to help readers discover their next book.
So how does the tool work? Picture a decision tree. The reader’s answer to the first question — option A or option B — eliminates any of the books that don’t fit that answer’s selected criteria. The reader then moves to the second question — option C or option D — and that answer will eliminate another group of books from the remaining pool. Eventually, the number of books that meets the criteria from all four answers dwindles to one. That is The Book Review’s recommendation.
To develop the questions for the most recent quiz, Ms. Harlan needed to first dissect 16 books on Mr. Marsh’s two lists. She considered each book’s defining characteristics, noting overlapping traits.
“You’re thinking of different ways you can split books in half,” Ms. Aufrichtig said. For instance: Is the book short or long? Set in the real world or in a fantasy one? In a city or in the countryside?
These characteristics informed the quiz’s questions, which Ms. Harlan wrote. Ms. Lieberman and Ms. Aufrichtig then built “all the scaffolding and machinery underneath,” Ms. Harlan said.
This reporter, after answering the first three questions of the most recent quiz, was asked a final one: Would he prefer an enchanting fantasy infused with Eastern European folklore,
or a short, bittersweet book about an Irish village’s dark secrets?
He chose the latter. The recommended book — “Small Things Like These” by Claire Keegan — had, in fact, been suggested by a real-life friend only a few months before.
Some quiz-takers reported receiving recommendations for books they had already read and enjoyed, which the editors took as a validating signal. And in the quiz’s online comment forum, Times readers have offered recommendations that go beyond the quiz’s list of 16.
Ms. Harlan said the tool was a good way to introduce readers to older books that may have been swallowed up by new releases. While The Times’s coverage does resurface classics — on big anniversaries, for example — this quiz, and future ones (summer reading, anyone?), offer a new template for mentioning classic works.
“Just because you missed a book the exact moment it came out doesn’t mean that it’s now lost forever,” Ms. Harlan said.
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