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Every book came from someone.
Remember who.

The best book you read last year came from a person, not an algorithm. BookPocket is a reading list that keeps track of who recommended each book, and shows you whose picks you love.

  • Person
  • Podcast
  • Publication
  • Bookshop
  • Video

Whoever it was, BookPocket gives them a name and a page of their own.

A screenshot of BookPocket’s dashboard on a phone: a greeting to the reader, four figures for the year (books read, average rating, currently reading, and how many sources), and the book being read now with its cover, the date it was started and the friend who recommended it. Beneath it, the chain showing that a friend recommended a book after hearing it on a podcast, which had picked it up from a magazine.

Who told you about that book?

Good books reach you from everywhere. A friend at book club, a podcast on the drive home, a review, a note on a bookshop shelf. You write the title down. By the time you read it, who told you and why is gone.

BookPocket keeps the who and the why with the book. Read for a while, and it can show you whose recommendations you love most.

The list you keep now

  • Sea of Tranquility Emily St. John Mandel
  • Piranesi Susanna Clarke
  • The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro

Who sent these? Nobody wrote it down.

Your list in BookPocket

  • Sea of Tranquility 272 pages Emily St. John Mandel
    Recommended by Nadia Okonkwo 4.8 4 books you rated She says the last chapter changes everything before it.
  • Piranesi 245 pages Susanna Clarke
    Recommended by The Long Room 4.5 6 books you rated
  • The Remains of the Day 257 pages Kazuo Ishiguro
    Recommended by The Ledger Review 4.2 3 books you rated

How it works

Follow one book from the day a friend mentions it to the day you know whose taste you share.

  1. Add the book

    At book club, Nadia says you have to read Sea of Tranquility. Search 139,000 books and add it to My Books. If it isn’t here yet, searching goes and fetches it.

  2. Say who sent it

    Name Nadia as the source, and note why she thinks you’ll love it. A podcast, a review or a bookshop works the same way. One field is enough to start.

  3. Learn whose taste you share

    Rate the books you finish. Your sources are ranked by how you rated what they sent, and your unread books are ranked the same way. It runs on your own ratings, and every average says how many books went into it.

Knowing who sent a book changes how you read it.

Once each book carries who sent it, BookPocket can do more with it. Here is everything it does today.

  • Name the source

    Record who recommended a book, and they become a source with a name and a page of their own. Everything they ever sent you lives there.

  • See whose taste you share

    See the average you’ve given each source’s books, so you find out whose taste you actually share, and whose you just enjoy hearing about.

  • Keep their reason beside yours

    Their reason for sending it sits beside your own thoughts on it. Two people’s words about one book, and you can always tell which is which.

  • Know what to read next

    Your unread shelf, ranked by how you rated the last books each source sent you. The evidence sits right beside every one of them.

  • Send a book to someone

    Send a book to a friend along with the reason you’re sending it. If they haven’t joined yet, the invitation carries both, and you’re named as the source when they take it.

  • See your reading year

    Books read this year, how that compares with last year, the average you gave them, and whose books you rated highest.

Be first to try it.

Start with one book and the person who told you about it. BookPocket is free while it’s in beta, and the core stays free forever. There’ll be an optional Pro tier later for anyone who wants more. Your books are ranked by your own ratings and nothing else. No ads, no AI recommendations.