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I read a lot. Lots and lots of books, actually I may have to get rid of my couch to make room for more books. I also insist on buying books, i like to look at my collection. My question is- how do you pick a book? Do you do research online? Recommendations? I personally like to just go to the bookstore and pick a section and look at covers until i find something that strikes my fancy. My DH spends hours looking online for books. I have found some amazing books this way, that I probably never would have picked for myself...
For me, it's a combination of many factors. I have a lot of friends who read the same genres that I read, and I'll take recommendations from them. I have my favorite authors list, and will pretty much buy any and every book those authors write. I'll sometimes look for new artists in the book store, based on reviews and comparisons to other authors in the genre.
I read a lot. Lots and lots of books, actually I may have to get rid of my couch to make room for more books. I also insist on buying books, i like to look at my collection. My question is- how do you pick a book? Do you do research online? Recommendations? I personally like to just go to the bookstore and pick a section and look at covers until i find something that strikes my fancy. My DH spends hours looking online for books. I have found some amazing books this way, that I probably never would have picked for myself...
I joined goodreads. It is pretty helpful especially as you obtain more friends and read their reviews on specific books. My husband got me a Kindle for christmas. I was against the whole e-reader thing because I love owning books. This might sound kind of nutty but for me its like having a souvenir of the mental journey I just took. I embraced the kindle because I found I wasn't getting to the bookstore as often as I liked. I like the Kindle but there are 3 or 4 books I have been wanting to read that are not available on it. So its not a complete replacement (thankfully).
I am soooo against an e-reader. I know it sounds weird but its partially what you said, i like to reflect kind of with the book if its on the shelf and i refuse to contribute to the downfall of the bookstore :/ i hate to think that there will be no more bookstores soon
I am soooo against an e-reader. I know it sounds weird but its partially what you said, i like to reflect kind of with the book if its on the shelf and i refuse to contribute to the downfall of the bookstore :/ i hate to think that there will be no more bookstores soon
I hear ya and so was I. Honestly, getting the Kindle was more for my husband's benefit than mine. We are a one income household and he always struggles on what to get me since funds are limited (I am mostly a SAHM for the time being). He would love to go get me a snazzy piece of jewelry or something. The year before last I gave him a list of books I wanted. He hates going to the mall. Where we live, its pretty boring so the large mall they built one city over is always insane. ALWAYS. Even relatives that come to visit are marveled by how busy the mall is all the time. "Is there a big sale going on?" Nope, people are bored. Borders closed down so my only option is the mall. We moved here a few years ago and where we were originally from, there were tons of ma and pa used bookstores along with the big chains. Here there is nothing but Barnes and Noble. Even our local library kind of blows because our area is upper middle class to wealthy and when the library was put up, they made it pretentious. There is a cafe in there that sells high priced italian coffees. The library is linked to others in the county so I can request books but it takes a few days otherwise the library up the road has a small selection. So reading became more of a hassle.
When my husband suggested the Kindle for the second year in a row I said okay. He was so happy. LOL. I am enjoying it more than I thought though. You can get a lot of free books and if your library accepts it, you can rent books via your kindle. My library doesn't off this feature yet. There have been a few books that I have downloaded from Kindle that were free and I ended up being grateful that I didnt pay for them.
I like that you can buy used books from amazon but the shipping ends up being a problem. For example, I found 5 books I really wanted. Some were cheap and as low as .50. My total was 8.20 but with shipping it was going to cost 29.80! I don't think the e-reader will kill the bookstores. There are too many book lovers that still enjoy the real deal. I personally think people just don't read like they used to. Sadly, out of friends and family I am the only avid reader. I have one friend that I have known since HS that lives out of state. She is the only person that I know that really enjoys reading. She is the one I get a lot of suggestions from. She read 1300 books last year! Whoa.
My sister is a huge reader like myself and has a kindle. I love it! But I just can't! I love my physical books and going and perusing the bookstore. I think on a kindle finding random books because the covert is cool might be difficult.
I think on a kindle finding random books because the covert is cool might be difficult.
I mostly read ebooks these days and the cover of a book is still the first thing that grabs my attention, I'm just browsing a website instead of a bookstore, which I actually find much quicker and easier. I can see what you're saying about it being less random though - because the Kindle store holds far more books than any storefront could house (well over a million btw), you have to find ways of narrowing down your search more, which becomes less random. But at the same time, a bigger selection means you're more likely to come across something you might not find at a store front.
I get my "random" fix from Kindle freebies and bargains - which introduce me to books I might not normally find or notice. I usually stick only to my fav genres because it helps narrow down the search field but with freebies and bargains, I'm more willing to try something a little different because there's less to lose. In fact, I found one of my favorite series when the first book was temporarily free on Kindle. I normally wouldn't have bought it because it wasn't in any of my fav genres but since it was free, I thought "why not?" And it turns out I absolutely loved it.
My usual method of picking books involves several factors though. First, as I mentioned, I don't normally read anything outside my favorite genres. Of course there's still thousands of books at Amazon to browse through within those genres so I will look at the highest rated ones or the bestselling. I also look at the new/recent releases in my fav genres or see what's popular in my Goodreads groups. Amazon's recommendations can be good too, if you use the "improve my recommendations" feature. Or if I go to a book I really liked and look under "Customers who bought this also bought" - it surprisingly has good recommendations. I also try to check out popular authors in my fav genres. In any case, while looking at any of these sources, if I spot a cover that looks interesting (and doesn't have a really low average rating), I'll read the blurb and if it still sounds interesting, I might read some reviews. The last step is reading the sample - I will send the sample to my Kindle and at some point, when I get around to reading it, I'll decide whether I want to buy it or not.
I'm a fairly heavy reader, I read about 90 books last year. I live in a small apartment so there's so way it could fit all the books I read if I were to read them in print.
I go to the nearby college library and just browse through the Leisure Reading room. I read about 30 books a year, and it's kept me going for almost five years. Every once in a while I get a clinker that I don't finish. If I hear about an older book that interests me, sometimes I can find it up in the stacks.
I won't read a book by an author that has too many titles, like Oates and Patterson. I look for titles by authors that have only one or two books on the shelf. I think the only author that I've read more than three books by is Cormac McCarthy. There is a lot of very fresh work out there.
I'm still working my way through "classic" authors and it generally takes me at least a couple of weeks to read a book (though sometimes more or less). I didn't "rediscover" reading until about four or five years ago, so I still have plenty of books in mind for the future.
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Borders closed down so my only option is the mall. We moved here a few years ago and where we were originally from, there were tons of ma and pa used bookstores along with the big chains. Here there is nothing but Barnes and Noble. Even our local library kind of blows because our area is upper middle class to wealthy and when the library was put up, they made it pretentious. There is a cafe in there that sells high priced italian coffees. 
The library is linked to others in the county so I can request books but it takes a few days otherwise the library up the road has a small selection. So reading became more of a hassle. 
