Show HN: MeetNewBooks – Book recommendations for those who read for fun
meetnewbooks.comHi HN,
Like many projects here, this started as something I built for myself. I shared it with a few friends, and it grew from there.
MeetNewBooks is a book recommendation app—a "find your next read" tool rather than a book tracking app.
How it works:
By Title: Enter a book you enjoyed, and we’ll suggest similar books. Depending on the book, you may see a mix of recommendations based on themes, genres, or tropes—combined with what other readers have enjoyed.
Search by Keywords (Genre, Theme, Trope): Browse recommendations using filters like "epic fantasy," "coming of age," or "billionaire romances." No vectors or embeddings—just a straightforward Elasticsearch implementation.
Suggestions Based on Recent Browsing: After you’ve looked at a few books, we’ll recommend others based on your browsing history. A "bulb" icon in the top right corner will show these suggestions.
Personalized Recommendations (free, but requires signup): Save and rate books, and we’ll tailor suggestions as soon as we have enough books to work with. We also compare your shelves with other readers to surface books you might love. If you don’t like a recommendation, you can mark it (or the author) as "Not Interested," and we’ll refresh your list.
There are no quizzes or questionnaires to fill out. And while this isn’t a book tracking app, many users have requested those features, so I’ve been gradually adding them.
We also have iOS and Android apps. I’d love to hear your feedback!
As a side note—after years of working on enterprise software with grumpy traders, it’s been a joy to build something for people who love reading as much as I do. Users report bugs, suggest features, and have been incredibly patient as I work through the backlog. I like it,even though I was looking for the difference between it and goodreads. Maybe consider just books from past centuries cos those are kinda hard to find. That I will pay to get my hands on some. Can you give me some examples of the books you’re looking for? I might have them, but sometimes I don’t have enough data to display them properly on the app/site. As for the differences—MeetNewBooks is a recommendations-first app rather than a tracking or social platform. I suppose it depends on what you read, but Goodreads' recommendations didn’t work for me. Brave New world by Aldous Huxley(20th century), La Comédie humaine by Honoré de Balzac(19th century)…..but I get the concept, I was just thinking since a recommendation app it would work well with a scarce niche and so that whenever I want unpopular old books I know where to go Thanks for getting back to me! Brave New World is actually quite popular on MeetNewBooks, and its recommendations include Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Animal Farm, and others [1]. For Honoré de Balzac, I do have several of his works, including Père Goriot. The top recommendations for that include authors like Gustave Flaubert, Stendhal, and Émile Zola [2]. I'll check if I have a more complete catalog of Balzac's works—some of this data can be tricky to source. If you have specific old or lesser-known books you're looking for, let me know! [1] https://www.meetnewbooks.com/suggest-book/57277/Brave-New-Wo...
[2] https://www.meetnewbooks.com/suggest-book/83435/Pere-Goriot-... You should pivot to fanfiction recommendations. I bet you will get a lot of traffic with that :) Fanfiction recs are a whole different beast, and things can get pretty wild in fanfic! I know a few fanfics that are really popular, so I definitely get the appeal