Setting up a book "playlist"

[Red]

Have you ever found yourself scheduling books in such a way that one book thematically follows the other? I'm not talking about reading the next in a series or anything like that, more reading a second book that talks to the previous one you read. I only ask because outside of reading the next book on the Literally Geeky list, I find that I have inadvertently just finished Bill Bryson's take on British culture (Notes From A Small Island) and followed it up with Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour by Kate Fox - I'm obviously in the mood for popular anthropological accounts of my own culture without realising it!

[Aaron]

I jumped into The Kingkiller Chronicles immediately after finishing A Song of Ice and Fire. It was about halfway through Day Two when I realized I'm starting to OD on epic fantasy. Time for a break.

This time of year, I usually go on a 'horror' reading spree, but that's purely seasonal.

Come November, I should be ready for the next fantasy series which was recommended to me by Ez: Gentleman Bastards.

[Ez, The God of Catan]

I'm a trifle obsessive, so I'll happily read three or four books in a theme. Sometimes there's a tangential connection; last year Kim Newman's Anno Dracula kicked off a binge on Victorian social history (with a focus on Peterloo massacre) and architecture, which led to Nicholas Hawksmoore's biography, which lead full circle to From Hell.

That said a book "playlist" is usually a deliberate choice. The past few months has been a string of capers, spies both real and fictional (only started reading John Le Carré this year), underground rivers, Peter Cooke, and the Medici.

PS: You can't go wrong with the Lies of Locke Lamora.