A month or so ago I began a short series on how I select books to read (and how I ended up with a huge pile of them sitting on my bookshelf!). I’ve had questions from people asking me how in the world I manage to come up with so much variety and it prompted me to just write these few posts detailing a few ways I pick out my books.
This post is going to cover the last three items on the list, namely: The Recommendations and The Advertisements and The Author. All three fairly simple, but oh so important.
3. The Recommendations. First of all, I highly recommend you go to a site like GoodReads.com or Shelfari.com and sign up there. It’s a valuable resource and a great way to explore authors and genres you’ve never heard of before (Steampunk novels anyone?). You can find me as a friend there as well, and add me! I always love to see what people are reading. Just search for my email Benz1966 at Gmail dot com. Both of these sites have a great recommend column, not to mention the fact that your friends can also recommend books they’ve read that they think you might like.. and you don’t have to worry about remembering the title or finding that slip of paper!
Another great resource for recommendations is Amazon.com. When you look at the title of a book you are interested in, there is that lovely “what other people bought” slider a bit further down the page. When I first started seriously reading (I don’t know how else to phrase that – my reading was serious before but never to this extent!) Amazon proved to be a valuable resource to me.
4. The Advertisements. Here is another place where GoodReads comes in handy. There are book giveaways, there are mini-ads (like you see on Facebook – but about books!). They come with great little teasers so you can tell at a glance if it might be something you are interested in. Books simply don’t get TV time, so in order to find ads for books, you must go to a place where books are central, of course. It seems so simple, but it really does play a big part. I think about 15% of the books I end up putting on my to-read list come from GoodReads advertisements alone.
5. The Author. Everyone does this. You find an author you like and next thing you know.. you’re grabbing up everything in sight. But I have a tip for you on this too. You see, there’s this nifty site called fantasticfiction.co.uk. Go there. Bookmark it. It’s my precious. If you are like me and love to read books in order and find out at a glance (and without having to look through some of those authors dopey websites) then you will be visiting this site several times a week to study what it has to offer. It also lists new books! Upcoming books! And author recommendations! Like Steven King? You can see what authors he recommends! So very pretty. I love this site and you will to.
Thanks for reading my ramblings and I hope you picked up a few tips that’ll help you out. I love to read and I love talking with others who love to read so drop me a note anytime you want to chat about that great book you read, or want a recommendation from me.
