Book stacks

Short lists of books, built around one idea.

A handful of books around one theme or one feeling, never a genre.

This is a stack

rubenfa

Understanding Science Fiction

If you're new to science fiction and want to understand its tropes, here's a stack of books covering what you should probably read to get up to speed

Wondrous Epic

3 months ago 1 50

Hand-picked

Open it to see every book in it.

Explore book stacks

What a stack looks like

Hand-picked

Cozy fantasy for a rainy afternoon

8 books · by Drayfus

In common

Open

Books that feel like coming home

5 books · by Drayfus

In common

Open

Books set in bookshops and libraries

9 books · by Drayfus

A title that promises something, every book keeps it, and the books they share lead you to the next stack.

The problem

"100 books you have to read" recommends nothing.

You've seen it a thousand times. Endless lists, no reason behind them, and almost always the same books. In the end you don't know where to start, so you go back to what you already knew.

The usual list

Endless, and says little

A hundred titles and no reason. It never says why they're there or who for.
Always the same ones: the classics from school and this year's bestsellers.
Sorted by genre, as if "fantasy" told you anything about how it would feel to read.

A stack

Short, and every book earns its place

Just a few books. Enough that you actually want to read all of them.
One idea in the title, and every book keeps it.
There's room for the odd book that never makes any other list.

Fewer books, and more reason to read each one.

Beyond genre

Genres aren't everything. A theme runs through all of literature.

A shop sorts books by genre because that's how they fit on the shelves. But nobody closes a book thinking "what a great crime novel." You think about what it left you with, or about how it was told.

An unreliable narrator doesn't stay in one aisle. You'll find one in Susanna Clarke's fantasy, in Iain Banks's science fiction, in Lolita. A stack puts them together because they do the same thing to you, even if the shop keeps them on different floors.

A stack: Narrators you can't trust for a second

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

Fantasy
Use of Weapons

Iain Banks

Science fiction
The Girl on the Train

Paula Hawkins

Mystery
Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn

Thriller
Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov

Classics
Trust

Hernán Díaz

Historical fiction

Two kinds of stack

Some are picked by one person. Others we make together.

Hand-picked

A recommendation with a name attached

Whoever makes it picks every book and the order, and nobody else touches it. It's what a good bookseller would tell you if you asked about exactly this.

Twists that send you back to page one

1 Gone Girl
2 Atonement
3 Shutter Island

You'll be able to make hand-picked stacks once you reach the Custodian rank.

Open

An idea that gets better with every vote

Whoever opens it sets the idea and the first books. After that every reader votes by ranking their favourites: your nº1 counts the most, and together everyone decides which books make it in. Anyone can suggest the one that's missing.

To walk through grief

Your vote

1 The Year of Magical Thinking
2 The Long Goodbye
3 Levels of Life

Anyone with an account can vote for books and suggest new ones.

Open stacks

An open stack doesn't grow forever.

Every new book has to earn its spot, and the longer the stack gets, the harder that is. The first ones get in fast. After that, each new spot asks for a lot more votes than the last.

The ones that don't make it don't disappear: they wait as candidates, and get in as soon as readers vote them above the last book on the stack. That's why an open stack gets better over time, instead of just getting longer.

Books in the stack

Votes

The first books get in fast. After that, every new spot costs more votes. The rest wait as candidates, ready to climb in.

And any stack you like, open or hand-picked, you save to your shelf.

One stack leads to another

Connections between stacks are how you discover.

Every stack connects to the ones that share books with it. There's always another door at the end of one.

You start on unreliable narrators and, through Piranesi, end up on a stack of magical realism. That's real discovery: not searching for the book you already knew, but arriving at the one you didn't know you wanted to read.

Narrators you can't trust for a second

Thrillers with twists you'll be the next to spoil Thrillers where someone pretends to be who they're not Magical realism where the strange feels ordinary Psychological thrillers with a twist you never see coming

Narrators you can't trust for a second

The search

Search for what's on your mind, even if it isn't a title.

twists

Stacks

Twists that send you back to page one

Hand-picked · 7 books

Thrillers with twists you'll be the next to spoil

Open · 10 books

Indie, dark psychological thrillers with twists that will leave you reeling

Open · 3 books

Try it on the home page

A theme, a trope, a feeling

Works best with one or two words. Try:

grief cozy narrators town

A book you loved

See every stack Gone Girl belongs to. The books beside it are your next read.

Recommend

That book you recommend to everyone? Give it a stack.

You don't need a hundred books. One clear idea and three books that live up to it already beat any endless list. And if the stack already exists, suggest yours in an open one.

Make a book stack See open stacks

Start with a theme.

One that's been on your mind. Chances are somebody has already made a stack for it, and that stack leads to another.

Search a theme, a trope, or a book Or browse every stack