About Most Recommended Books
(Our Story)
Two best friends, one mission: to become the world's most trusted source for discovering your next great read. Since 2020, we've helped millions of people find books they love.
Meet the Founders
Richard Reis
Software engineer who enjoys building products and diving deep into topics like finance and artificial intelligence. When he's not curating book recommendations, Richard writes about what he learns on Medium and has appeared on various podcasts. His approach to organizing knowledge helped shape MRB into what it is today.
Anurag Ramdasan
Leading the investment team at 3one4 Capital, Anurag brings his startup expertise and love for books to MRB. Beyond his investment work, Anurag continues to write code and build apps. His technical skills and systematic thinking help ensure MRB runs smoothly while staying true to our mission: helping people find great books.
How It All Started
The story is simple: Richard loved listening to Tim Ferriss' podcast. At the end of every episode, Tim would ask guests about the books they've gifted most often. Richard kept track of all these recommendations in one (long) text file in his computer.
During lockdown in 2020, Richard and Anurag were talking. " What if we put these recommendations out there for everyone?" And that's how Most Recommended Books was born. No grand vision, just two friends who thought other people might find this useful too.
Today, Most Recommended Books serves tens of thousands of monthly visitors from over 150 countries. We've cataloged ~300,000 books, and here's the thing we're most proud of: every single one has been manually vetted by us. No automated scrapers dumping garbage into our database. Just real, quality recommendations.
Our Mission & Values
We started Most Recommended Books with a simple yet ambitious goal: to become the world's leading destination for book recommendations.
Our Core Values
Quality Over Quantity
We manually review every book before it enters our database. This ensures you can trust every recommendation.
Community First
Our readers aren't just visitors—they're partners. With your help spotting errors and suggesting improvements, we keep MRB accurate and up-to-date.
Continuous Improvement
We're constantly refining our algorithms, expanding our database, and finding new ways to help you discover amazing books.
How We Create Our Content
Behind every page on MRB is a carefully crafted methodology. We combine automated data collection with rigorous manual vetting to ensure you get the best recommendations possible.
People Pages
Our people pages are where the magic begins (and how the site started!). We don't just list random celebrities—we carefully curate influential thinkers, leaders, and creators whose book recommendations carry weight.
Deep Research
We scour interviews, podcasts, social media posts, personal websites, articles, and more to find authentic book recommendations.
Verification
Every recommendation is verified to ensure accuracy. No fake quotes or misattributions.
Continuous Updates
When someone shares a new book recommendation, our community helps us catch it and add it to their profile.
List Pages
Our list pages solve a common problem: when you search for "best finance books," you get 50 different websites with 50 different opinions. We aggregate them all.
Consensus Building
We analyze the top ~5 websites for each topic, identifying which books appear most frequently across trusted sources.
Authority Weighting
Not all sources are equal. We give more weight to established authorities and genuine reader reviews.
Trend Analysis
We track which books are gaining or losing popularity to keep our lists fresh and relevant.
Series Pages
Ever finished a great book only to discover it's part of a series—but you can't figure out the reading order? We've been there.
Complete Cataloging
We track down every book, novella, and companion piece in a series, including those tricky "book 3.5" entries.
Multiple Reading Orders
We provide the exact publication order so that you can read the series in the order it was intended.
Community Feedback
Readers help us catch new releases, prequels, and spin-offs (sometimes as soon as they're announced!)
Summary Pages
Remember Cliff Notes? We loved them too. Our summaries are the modern version—clean, comprehensive, and actually helpful.
Single-Page Design
No annoying pagination or ads. Everything you need on one clean, readable page you can bookmark or print.
One Focus
We focus on the exact summary (not our opinion or telling you what to think).
Popular Demand
We create summaries for books our readers request most, ensuring we're meeting real needs.
The Human Touch Makes the Difference
While we use technology to gather data, every recommendation is reviewed by human eyes. We've personally vetted all ~300,000 books in our database. Quality matters more than quantity.
Powered by Our Community
Here's something we're incredibly proud of: MRB isn't just built by us—it's maintained by a passionate community of book lovers from around the world.
Every month, we receive suggestions, corrections, and updates from readers like you. Found a book missing from a series? Noticed an author's new recommendation? Spotted a typo? Our community catches it all.
How You Can Help
We've made it incredibly easy to contribute. Our contact page is always just one click away. Whether you're reporting an error, suggesting a new feature, or sharing a book recommendation we missed, we want to hear from you.
Fun fact: Some of our best features came from reader suggestions!
MRB By the Numbers
What started as two friends sharing book recommendations has grown into something incredible:
Our Impact
📚 We've helped millions of people discover books they might have otherwise missed
🌍 Our visitors come from every continent (yes, even Antarctica!)
💌 We have received hundreds of thank-you messages from readers
🏫 We've had libraries and schools say they use us as a trusted resource
Link to Us
Love Most Recommended Books? Help spread the word! Whether you’re a blogger, librarian, teacher, or just a book lover with a website, we’d be honored if you linked to us.
Option 1: Our Badge
Copy this code to display our badge:
<a href="https://mostrecommendedbooks.com" rel="noopener noreferrer">
<img src="https://mostrecommendedbooks.com/mrb-badge.png"
alt="Most Recommended Books"
width="150" height="75">
</a>Option 2: Text Link
Prefer plain text? Use this HTML:
<a href="https://mostrecommendedbooks.com" rel="noopener noreferrer"> Most Recommended Books </a>
Option 3: Custom Mention
Writing about books or creating a resource list? Mention us in any wording that feels natural. Examples:
- “Find more recommendations at Most Recommended Books.”
- “See what Bill Gates is reading on MRB.”
- “Get the full series order on mostrecommendedbooks.com.”
Thank you for helping us reach more book lovers! 💕
Join Our Reading Journey
Ready to discover your next great read? Explore our people, lists, series, and summaries to find the book that fits you.
Thank you for being part of our story. Here's to many more pages, chapters, and books in our shared reading adventure! 📚