How Do You Decide What To Read Next?

I have a to read pile of books. I have 3 right now. I never lend out my books and I also did not vote in your pole only due
to the fact none fitted my thoughts.

Well, I don't have an actual line up of books, but I'll try to jot down the name of a book I hear a review of, like on NPR, that captures my attention, and try to find at the library.

So, I suppose it's a list.

I know what you mean by not having something ready to read.

The other week I returned books to a small library branch near work, and looked for something in the new section. I couldn't think right then of an author to look for in the stacks.

I looked and looked, zilch...nothing worth reading. But I had to have SOMETHING.

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I actually took out a book by Robin Cook (shudder).

Then my husband had to listen to me whine and moan about how he should go back to practicing medicine and stop subjecting people to this crap.

I've usually got 10 books on deck. I constantly find myself adding to a list. It just happens. Like the other day I just happened to remember hearing about a pitcher from the 70s who threw a no-hitter on LSD. I googled "no-hitter on LSD" and read up on him, Dock Ellis.

Then I did an Amazon title search with the name "Dock Ellis," and discovered that Dock partnered up with former Poet Laureate Donald Hall for a biography. I bought it.

Amazon's recommendations aren't totally off, either. I find myself reading lots of short story collections, off small presses, I never would have heard about otherwise, since I don't have time to read snooty writer's magazines.

I keep an address book full of titles I'm on the lookout for (listed alphabetically by author -- did I mention I'm anal retentive?) so that when I hit my favourite used book store or the library I have an idea what to look for. At the moment I have 25 books on my "to read" shelf and another 18 just-for-fun paperbacks (really light reading) that I'll read or not eventually. These numbers are way too high and I have denied myself a trip to library any time soon. My library has a "new and notable" shelf for both fiction and non-fiction and I often find great books there that are not on my "list" -- this just compounds the problem...

I would be in a real funk if I didn't have something to read in the house; I often have something to read in my car too, in case I find myself in some kind of waiting room situation.
Usually I have a stack of books from various sources, resting in wait for my attention.

How I select books -

I glance over the shelves at the local GoodWill.
I glance at the $2.99 shelves at the local Hastings Book Store; have found some good short story collections there.
I go to Powells.com and select $50. worth of low-priced 'police procedurals', or whatever other category interests me at the time, the $50. being the point at which you don't have to pay postage. Last time I did that I got something like 14 books.
I need to find a good used book store here that also has a buy book system.
I don't, unfortunately, use the library as the libraries here are quite inconvenient to my neighborhood.
If I am ever in desperation city, re reading, I'll grab an old New Yorker and read the small print movie review and gallery reviews.

I have about ten or so books on the shelf calling out to be read, but I always take out a book from the library first, so I go through about one of my own books every year or so (seriously). I find the amazon.com reviews very helpful, and dont trust word of mouth! No-one has ever recommended me a book I enjoyed. Then again, I dont read many novels, mostly non-fiction.

I have three awaiting me right now. One biography and two science fiction. Reading has been my best friend for many years. Sometime I have to cry when finishing a good book. Sometimes at the end of a good read I just feel so lost and a loose ends.

I understand those emotions, McMavis. (Welcome to a2k, by the way.)

There are also books that remind me of other great books I've already read. So before moving on down the list, I stall on somthing old.

Any re-readers here?

I am...

I was just thinking of reading the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy (quartet) again. It's been about 15 years. I think of it as ultimate summer reading.

I can't re-read everything, but there are some deep/ dense books that I loved that benefit from another reading, and some light/fluffy/funny stuff that's fun to go back to.

In general, I've gotten way behind on my reading and so as of now feel like I'll never catch up. I usually decide based on NYT/ New Yorker reviews; also tend to like paperbacks published by Vintage International.

I LOVE Vintage paperbacks. They feel nice.

I like the 1980s editions. All of Raymond Carver's collections, for example, with the weird drawings on the covers.

They do!

I think I read that very book... I recognize the font/style at least, maybe another one in the series.

BBB
When I moved from California to Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was accompanied by 40 boxes of books. I've probably added another 50 since then. My problem is before I finish one book, I buy another and on and on following the current events path. I usually read more than one book at a time. All of this is probably because most of my books are non-fiction that I can put down and then get back to.

Right now I'm trying to finish "Internal Combustion; How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives" by Edwin Black. It's a wonderful history of the development of the automobile.

Book Description

Internal Combustion is the compelling tale of corruption and manipulation that subjected the U.S. and the world to an oil addiction that could have been avoided, that was never necessary, and that could be ended not in ten years, not in five years, but today.

Edwin Black, award-winning author of IBM and the Holocaust, has mined scores of corporate and governmental archives to assemble thousands of previously uncovered and long-forgotten documents and studies into this dramatic story. Black traces a continuum of rapacious energy cartels and special interests dating back nearly 5,000 years, from wood to coal to oil, and then to the bicycle and electric battery cartels of the 1890s, which created thousands of electric vehicles that plied American streets a century ago. But those noiseless and clean cars were scuttled by petroleum interests, despite the little-known efforts of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford to mass-produce electric cars powered by personal backyard energy stations. Black also documents how General Motors criminally conspired to undermine mass transit in dozens of cities and how Big Oil, Big Corn, and Big Coal have subverted synthetic fuels and other alternatives.

He then brings the story full-circle to the present day oil crises, global warming and beyond. Black showcases overlooked compressed-gas, electric and hydrogen cars on the market today, as well as inexpensive all-function home energy units that could eliminate much oil usage. His eye-opening call for a Manhattan Project for immediate energy independence will help energize society to finally take action.

Internal Combustion, and its interactive website www.internalcombustionbook.com, will generate a much-needed national debate at a crucial time. It should be read by every citizen who consumes oil -- everyone. Internal Combustion can change everything, not by reinventing the wheel, but by excavating it from where it was buried a century ago.

We've pretty much stopped buying books. Every room in a large house has it's own part of the collection, and the library has stacks everywhere. Buying books is expensive, and we so hate to get rid of books that they end up gathering dust somewhere.

Being retired its easy for us to visit our local library branches, and Albuquerque has a fine library system. Generally, I'll check out three or four books, and read them one after another. My first stop is the "new and important" shelves, and generally I'll find enough to keep me occupied for a week. I avoid what I think of as "headline" books that have been written in a rush while the topic is hot. Most of the hot political books are so biased that they are useless. I learned that reading similar books that came out during the 19th and 20th centuries. Nothing so dated as contemporary political commentary even five years after they are published.

What I do look for are serious scholarly works on timeless topics, histories dealing with periods and events that I'm interested in learning more about, and books within a topic that I'm concentrating on. Each week I read at least one serious and important non-fiction book. In the same time frame I'll choose one serious book that is of somewhat lesser interest, and a couple of fictional works. Just finished Norman Mailer's "The Castle in the Woods". For fiction I tend to read everything written by favorite authors, and sometimes that takes awhile to accomplish.

On our shelves at home, we have collections on History, Military, Asian Religion and Philosophy, Biographies, Art, American West, Celtic Literature and Studies, Classic Literature, and most important reference books for the quick check into spelling and exact time-lines. Scattered throughout the collection are special books like, the first English translation of Caesar's "Gallic War" from the early 17th century, one of five hundred copies of a disputed Napoleonic autobiography, a very limited edition of a book that tells more than anyone would ever want to know about ducks.

We are never without a book to read, ever. Even going out grocery shopping, we carry along a book to read during "down time". After 60 years of reading, we haven't even completed the more formal "list" I started on as a teenager. I doubt that I'll ever finish "Finnegan's Wake", or Proust. Ah, pity the illiterate.

TTH--

Avid readers are always welcome. Have you had unfortunate experiences when lending books?

Chai--

The local library is very small and the borrowing population keeps the "New Books" shelf whittled down.

I've found out that the best way to find something that I want to read from the sparse selection available is to lower myself to the floor and browse the bottom shelves.

I'm reminded of my mother who came home from the library fifty years ago and announced, "I've read everything at eye level and I'm going to have to either stoop or stretch."

I hope Robin Cook's metaphorical cage trembled under your wrath.

Gargamel--

I've got news for you, buddy. You're an addict always looking for a fix.

I'm also a re-reader of books. A friend of mine told me her Mother told her that people who don't have time for rereading beloved books don't have time for old friends, either.

Tai Chai--

You're obviously an anal addicted reader. Odd, isn't it that perfectly people who would plan a glamorous vacation or a complex House & Beautiful redecoration scoff at people who plan their reading lives?

Osso--

Desperation City Reading--I've been there. I started babysitting when I was twelve and learned to bring plenty of reading material along because...gasp...horror...there were people who lived in houses without books, magazines or newspapers.

I browse second hand books in Amazon when I want to indulge me-me-me. Alas, the local bookstores--like my local library--are woefully finite.

Quincy--

What is the good of a backlog of books if it keeps being eroded?

Books are stacked everywhere in my house too, most are shelved but for too many there are not enough shelves. I cannot seem to part with even one. I am with Asherman in that I no longer buy only well almost always. Let my just say that I avoid book stores of all sorts especially used book stores and yard sales.

One plus to not buying books is the library. I love the smell of a library. The use of a computer instead of a card file is OK I guess but I miss going through the cards to find what I want.

On occasion I do go back and reread books and I often will refer to a book previously read when I am writing. When I find an exciting writer, I will read all of that one person's work.

The last big move for me included 75 boxes of books. That will not happen again as I refuse to pay that much money again to move around old books. When and if I do have to pack up I plan to spend a lot of time reminiscing with all the old favs, some new favs but most will go, they have too.

I have no list. It's impulse, what catches my eye, what is lend or given to me, or what I happen upon.
Sometimes I will note something I want to remember, and that means a trip to library or buying it before I forget.

I have a habit of writing reminders to myself on scraps of paper, and that is about as far as it goes.

I can't stand to be without something to read.

Yup, I'll lend out a book I haven't read if I like you. More like, I have to trust that you are a person who respects the sacredness of a book not yet read, or that I actually spend money on. Or if I figure the person will benefit from it more than me (a young cousin who doesn't read much who took an interest in my Atlas, for example! )

I love the way that seeds can be spread with books. People did it for me, now that is where I get a lot of my pleasure from with my own little library.
Not much a library. More like a bunch of piles all over the apartment.

I'm a fan of circling books around. If I lose books that way sometimes, so be it. This way I get to read a lot of stuff I never would have touched or looked at myself, too.

Not to mention it gets rid of ones I've read four times already. teehee.

I like that. I'm going to use it.

I have a book, one of these days I'm going to read it.