Two questions from Booking Through Thursday this week, about selecting your books.
Pooch asks: Overall, what factor most influences your choice of your next read?
Sefcug asks: What is it that makes you want to read a book by an author you have never read before?
Good questions, but not easy to answer. My choice of my next read could be influenced by anything, really. What mood I happen to be in. If someone mentioned a certain book recently. What happens to catch my eye when I visit the library or bookshop. I don’t keep a “to read” list except perhaps vaguely in my head.
As for what makes me want to read a book by an author I’ve never read before… That too might be a review in the newspaper, a recommendation from a friend, a discussion between readers with different opinions about it (so that I want to form my own opinion) or just a cover or title catching my attention and the blurb sounding promising.
Right now, for example, I’m listening (in Swedish translation) to an audio book: The Dream by Harry Bernstein. Never heard of it before I borrowed it at the libary last week. Basically I think I was looking for something, anything that was not a murder mystery.
Now when I look him up, I find that this is his second autobiographical novel and that he published the first one at age 96. He lived to be 101, with three successful books behind him; and the fourth will be published posthumously in 2012.
Never too late, it seems!
i look for books by my favorite authors in the New Book section of the library first. then i look at the spines that tell what type book it is, i go for mystery, thriller first and drama 3rd.
ReplyDeletei found on of my favorite authors, David Rosenfeldt because several years ago I pulled out a mystery and the front cover was a gorgeous Golden Retriever, the title Play Dead. this is a series about a lawyer with a dog and i have read all 4 of them and waiting for one this month.
mostly if it is a new author i read the cover story and the first couple of pages before i check it out.
I'm glad about the 'never too late' bit as I must spend the winter revising my (intended) first one.
ReplyDeleteI do keep a to be read list and it's very long. But it all too often gets overtaken by a book which simply catches my eye. It might be the cover illustration, the blurb on the back or simply the title. (Then I check how small the print is and if too small I have to reject it but it may then go on my to be read list as one to get on Kindle or search for a copy with larger print.)
My reading material often comes to me through others; my mother-in-law sends me book parcels from England once or twice a year, my Mum gets books from the library which I see when I go to her place for lunch one a week, or my sister buys the latest work of an author we both like.
ReplyDeleteAlso, my huge downloading spree from the kindle shop earlier this year made for a wide choice of "chance" reading - sometimes I'm in for a disappointment there, but so far, most of the time I have been lucky.
In my weekly newspaper and on other people's blogs, I read book reviews and then go and look for the books in my local library's online catalogue or the kindle store.
Apart from following certain series (such as McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street) my reading such as it is these days depends what takes my fancy on the spur of the moment.
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