The ultimate flowchart for finding your next book
Editor’s note: This article was reviewed and updated in July 2026 to meet Expert Editor’s latest editorial standards.
Ah, summertime (in the northern hemisphere at least!). That blissfully balmy time of year where school’s out, vacations are scheduled, and the beach beckons.
Sunshine and family make great company, but sometimes there’s nothing better than diving into a rich, immersive story. The only thing between you and enjoying a great read is the leap of faith it takes to open the cover! We’ve done all the heavy lifting for you.
This infographic is packed with authors and books that call to all types of readers. Most of these paths lead to multiple books to choose from – each with a quick word to describe the story that lies between its covers.
Easy on the eyes and user-friendly, it’s designed to help you find a book to sink your teeth into this summer.
Summertime! It is the season when most of us can devote more time to fun. And more time for books.
Books make satisfying companions when you bring them along on your summer excursions. Bill Gates, for instance, likes to bring a duffel bag stuffed with books with him when he goes off for vacation. Barack Obama loves to read his books in the sun by the beach.
This ultimate summer reading flowchart from The Expert Editor will have you well prepared for selecting your next book, wherever you may go. Whether you prefer thrillers, biographies, or poetry, we’ve got you covered!
On the list of classic fiction, we have Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, both of which feature strong female lead characters. While both have been made into movies, these classic books hold their own precisely because the details and nuances of the prose are often difficult to capture on screen. Not all the scenes and fine points can be included in a film for practical reasons such as running time, and subtleties of plot can be sacrificed as a result.
In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth’s love story with Mr. Darcy plays a central role, but the stories of Elizabeth’s four sisters are also woven through the narrative. The troubling way that women are made inherently subordinate in society at the time underlies the entire story. Wuthering Heights met a mixed reception on publication — widely criticised as immoral and inartistic, though some reviewers recognised the power of its storytelling — and it was only later that readers more broadly embraced its dark themes of revenge and violence. The most controversial character for the Victorian audience was Heathcliff. Brontë published Wuthering Heights under the male pen name Ellis Bell, as she and her sisters shared a general concern that women writers were liable to be looked on with prejudice by publishers and reviewers — and the novel’s raw, violent themes made that calculation all the more pressing.
Unlike Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is a classic novel that received almost universal acclaim after it was first published. This story is set in the early to mid 19th century, and is about an orphan named Pip who grows up to become a gentleman. The story involves crime, guilt, revenge, and reward. Its colorful, enthralling characters will keep you entertained for a long time.
Crime and Punishment is one of the great Russian classics, and also involves the theme of crime, guilt, and later on, redemption, by a woman’s love. Like Wuthering Heights, the characters in this story are compelling, and their psychology and motives can often be easily inferred. Although some of these characters are destitute and driven to desperate measures because of poverty, such as Sonya, the prostitute, a theme in this story is that money is not everything, for what is wealth, when you cannot live in peace?
Perhaps no time has ever felt more relevant for the themes of Orwell’s 1984. This dystopian story hauntingly depicts a society built on fear, division, and the manipulation of truth. We are now well past the year 1984, yet the novel’s warnings resonate in an era of political polarisation, social media surveillance, and the quiet erosion of privacy. The internet can follow us whenever we visit a site and track our private information. In a way, “Big Brother” takes many modern forms — from corporations finding ways to shape our choices, to the ease with which private information can be gathered by those in power. Although you’ve probably already read 1984, it is always worth another read.
1984 is a novel that is often read in school, followed by essays and papers on the material. One of the best ways to ensure that your academic work is in top form is to have it professionally edited or proofread. With options such as thesis editing, business editing, and book editing, your work will come across polished and strong.
If you are going for adventure, and ancient Greek literature such as The Iliad and The Odyssey don’t rock your boat, there is The Hobbit, where you will become immersed in the world of Middle Earth. If you like pirates, you will love Treasure Island, for this book itself has been responsible for many pirate clichés.
Do you like science fiction? We’ve picked out two Kurt Vonnegut novels, The Sirens of Titan and Breakfast of Champions. If you love irony and black humor, Breakfast of Champions will keep you satisfied, with its themes of mental illness, social and economic callousness, free will, and suicide. The Sirens of Titan also explores the theme of free will, as well as life purpose, and the story centers around a Martian alien invasion of Earth.
Perhaps you are the kind of person who loves to be on the edge of your seat, immersed in a thriller. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins is a psychological thriller, told from the first person point of view of three different women: Rachel, Anna, and Megan. There is a destructive male character in the story, who is discovered later on, but ultimately, the women defeat him in the end.
This flowchart spans a genuinely broad range — from Victorian classics to dystopian fiction, from Russian literature to modern thrillers. Whatever your reading mood this summer, there’s something here worth picking up.