Our friends at n+1 are back with their annual pre-yuletide gift. Bookmatch, the highly bespoke literary quiz, pairs readers with a custom-made syllabus based on their answers to a dozen or so quirky questions. Be warned: this is not Buzzfeed’s multiple choice.
Last year, Bookmatch pitched existential softballs, like “You like it when a book _____ you. a) skewers b) soothes c) seduces d) startles.” Previous queries have skewed cheeky. As in 2023’s prompt, “You are a finger. Which one?” The quiz taker’s responses generate a customized 10-book reading list curated by n+1’s vast contributor network.
This year, recommenders include cultural heavies like Susan Orlean, Tony Tulathimutte, Jia Tolentino, Vincenzo Latronico, Sarah Thankam Matthews, and Tavi Gevinson. Quiz-takers also receive a discount to purchase books on their list via the good old indie bookseller McNally Jackson. Eh, but it’s just an internet quiz, you protest.
How “bespoke” could it possibly be? Consider a personal testimony. Last year’s Bookmatch led me to some of my favorite reads in 2025, including Charlotte Shane’s An Honest Woman and the diaries of Helen Garner.
Somehow, the masthead could also divine both my inner Boomer (Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties) and my inner Buddhist priest (Yukio Mishima’s The Temple of the Golden Pavilion). It’s a wild thing to feel seen by something built with binary. But I am here to tell you, the better world is possible.
Or as co-editor Dayna Tortorici has it, the pleasure of the thoughtful hand sell is very much alive. Billionaires cajole us left and right to surrender our cognitive function for the sake of convenience; AI slop operas serve up easy dopamine; sycophantic chatbots swaddle us in cocoons of false certainty. It’s hard not to feel like you’re living in the Pottersville timeline of It’s a Wonderful Life, amid all this.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
