Feature Creep 2026, 11 - Bookle (Title WIP) - Design

I'm dragging my feet terribly with this category, but I need things to continue, and while I have trouble finding time to sit down in front of my machine and actually code, instead of write, I guess I might as well settle some of the design for a project I had on my mind.

Every now and then I have trouble picking a book to read. I've found a solution to that problem by now, but I came up with a more interesting, and arguably more fun one. The core idea is to generate a 3 by 3 grid with properties of a book, and the reader is meant to fill out all of the properties either by

• choosing 6 books, one for each row and one for each column (sudoku mode)
• or choosing as few books as possible (race mode) The application should have a download button for the generated .svg, because I don't imagine the user being able to read the books in the same session as they have the browser open. It would make for a fun way to both get reading inspiration, as well as entering monthly (I'm guessing) reading challenges where the challenge isn't just volume.

I'm entirely unsure about the title. It might make sense to follow in the "Wordle -> Squirdle" convention and call it Bookle or Readle. Maybe I can find something that sounds less silly, but as I'm relatively unconcerned about branding, I would like to nail down how this thing would actually be used.

The property options are the most interesting part of the whole idea. There are ways to look up books in general, and I feel like the user should be able to filter for them. Off the top of my head I can think of

• genre
• release year (let's arbitrarily say by decade)
• by author
• concerning some topic
• first release language
• first release country
• title stipulations (such as: title contains some word, or title starts with some letter)
• ISBN stipulations (I guess this makes sense if you're a little odd)
• literary movement
• narrative person (1./2./3. person narration)
• cover stipulations (such as colour of the cover, or cover depicts some object)

There should also be an option to upload a list with self-defined properties, though whether that improves the user experience I'm unsure.

I could never really keep up a reading list, because I'm too chaotic and my process to frantic to keep up to date with an app like goodreads. Still, I think goodreads is a good enough source for books and I could scrape for genres, so I'm planning to make that part of the front-end.

There should be a switch to determine wheter a row/column can have the same kind of property multiple times, e.g. recommend a book that is both part of the "Biographical" and "Suspense" genre at the same time. Without checking too closely, the risk that the application will suggest impossible books is relatively high. The easiest problem is when the book is meant to be released both in the 1940s and the 2010s, or written by two authors simultaneously that never met. I'm guessing an option to reroll impossible combinations might also make sense.