Friday, July 24, 2015

My current book selection process

I recently started reading The Engagements (which so far is excellent!) and I started thinking about my recent reading selection process. Which has been:

  • Read a review about a book
  • Think "Hey, that sounds swell" and put it on my Goodreads list
  • Forget about book
  • Sporadically remember the awesomeness of Booksliced and set up some alerts
  • Forget about alerts
  • 6 months go by and I get an alert for this book that I don't remember at all but, hey!, at some point I decided it would be good and it's super cheap now so I should probably buy it
Most of the time I just have to trust that past-me makes good choices. 

Lately I'd been reading more and more on my Kindle because of the whole moving thing and the whole trying-not-to-acquire-more-books-I'll-have-to-move thing. But now we're all moved in and I already got my next Just The Right Book so perhaps I'll be switching over to physical books soon. I'm also pretty sure have some other unread books sitting around, but I might have to wait for that whole book organization thing to happen before I figure out where those ended up.

I've never been good about planning my reading out. I always just go with whatever I feel like reading at the moment, but lately I've been doing far more reading-trust-falls, where I can't hardly remember what the book is about but I just sort of dive in. Sometimes it works (as I said, The Engagements is thus far a success)... 

and sometimes not so much (Men Explain Things To Me you were...not quite what I expected). 

More often than not things work out. I add books to that Goodreads list only if I think they're actually ones I'll read and that a trusted reviewer recommended. But really, how else do you select what book to read next?