Genre-based book recommendations are broken. Someone who loves "The Great Gatsby" and "Norwegian Wood" doesn't want "literary fiction" — they want books that feel a certain way.

I built BookMoodMatch to solve this.

Why Mood > Genre

Think about the last book you loved. You probably wouldn't describe it by genre first. You'd say it was "cozy" or "mind-bending" or "made me ugly-cry on the train."

That emotional dimension is what BookMoodMatch uses. Instead of asking "what genre?" it asks "what mood are you in?"

How It Works

The matching algorithm considers:

Current mood — contemplative, adventurous, cozy, intense, light

Reading context — commute, vacation, before bed, weekend binge

Past favorites — not just titles, but what you loved about them

Avoidance signals — topics or tones you want to skip right now

The Data Challenge

Building a mood taxonomy for books is harder than it sounds.…