How a Book Coach Gives Book Recommendations

Some thoughts after a very social vacation

I just came back from a vacation where my husband and I went to the wedding of a dear friend’s daughter, visited one of our own children, and spent six days biking through Vermont and into Canada with a group of people we’d only just met. Other than the time with our child, I spent a lot of time with people I didn’t know.

And you know what happens when people find out you’re a book coach?

They either want to pick your brain about the book they are thinking of writing (there was surprisingly little of that on this trip) or they want to know what book you would recommend they read.

To deal with the people who want to pick my brain, see the post I wrote about that topic HERE.

As for responding to the people who seek book recommendations, I love this part of my job! Recommending books is powerful! It’s like prescribing medicine. It’s like speaking a secret language that connects people and ideas.

I also consider it a big responsibility. If someone is asking for a book recommendation they either don’t read a lot (which means you have a chance to make a big impact on them) or they do read a lot (which means you kind of have to bring it.)

When someone hears my recommendation and pulls out their phone to write down the title, it always makes me smile: my recommendation has hit the mark. And if they contact me later to say they read it, they loved it, and they are now recommending it to other people? That’s the dream!

But what’s funny is that a book coach doesn’t read a lot of the books everyone else is reading. I am by no means the most well-read person I know — far from it. I read all day long, but mostly works in progress. When I read for pleasure or to learn something, it is after hours and I am often tired and I am usually reading a book everyone else read years ago. I am aware of a lot of books, and know about a lot of books, but haven’t usually read the latest books all my non-book-coach friends are reading.

The New York Times recently published a list of the best 100 books of the century so far (if you didn’t see it, you can read it HERE and listen to a great podcast about it HERE.) Their process for coming up with that list was intense and involved, and the results were fascinating.

I’ve only read two of the top ten books and didn’t like either one very much.

In the top 50, there were only two books I frequently recommend.

I have more than fifteen books from the list in my TBR pile, some of which have been there for some time.

Of my top ten all-time favorite books (the list I would sketch out right now), I think only one title appears on the Times list.

So how do I recommend books to people? What is my process? In thinking about it, I have four go-to strategies:

1.) I try to find a point of connection to the person — something obvious I know about them that ties into a good book I’ve recently read (or am reading or am about to read.) I recommended Everest, Inc, for example, to our bike trip leader. It’s a book about the business of climbing Mt. Everest. To someone whose child is a dancer, I suggested They’re Going to Love You by Meg Howrey, a gorgeous novel whose protagonist is a choreographer and the child of a former Balanchine ballerina.

2.) I look for a conceptual link to a book they’ve already mentioned in conversation. At one recent dinner, a new friend mentioned that his opening line with people he doesn’t know has to do with the introvert/extrovert dichotomy explored in Quiet by Susan Cain. I mentioned what an enormous impact that book had on me, as well. Later, he asked me what other books I might recommend and I thought of Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. It’s a book about how to be in the world, how to think of ourselves in the world, and I imagined someone who enjoyed one book might like the other.

3.) I often default to a short list of books I have loved and successfully recommended before. I have developed trust in them and they rarely disappoint. Books on the top of that list currently include:

• The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker, a book about how to bring people together in community and why it matters.

• Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, a book about running one of the world’s best restaurants and what it means to serve.

• Dear Edward, a novel about a plane crash and what it means to survive.

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, a novel about creativity and what it means to make things together.

4.) I usually lean heavily on the book I am most engaged with, which is easy on vacation. I often save books I‘m excited about for a vacation because I know I will have the time and space to sink into them and go deep. The book in that current position is Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker.

I’m obsessed with this book. I have it on my Kindle, but when I saw it on the shelf of a small bookstore in Vermont, I squealed, as if coming across a dear friend in the middle of nowhere. I will write more about it soon.

I have recently recommended Get the Picture to an art curator, to a dean of a college of arts and sciences, and to an environmental scientist who is also a quilter. This book touches on so many different big and important ideas about art and creativity and being a human in the world. It’s my favorite kind of book — and it was recommended to me by a friend who knows I care about these things, which goes back to #1.

I can’t wait to tell him how much I am loving it.

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