Centerfield: How Do You Choose Books To Read?

August 29, 2007

How Do You Choose Books To Read?

This post, on an experiment in choosing books purely by cover, inspired me to wonder, how do you choose your books?

My Algorithm:

1) By Author (I have many author preferences built up, so this is easy for me)

2) By Author

3) By Author, watching the Internet for promising new leads. I used to use AlexLit's recommender. before they kicked the bucket; amazon's has never helped me much.

4) Random: I choose a book entirely at random from a promising region. I then check three quasirandom pages for readability annd interest, one from near the beginning, one from the middle, and one from the end. I used to just check one random page, but since then I've read about authors that only take care with the first three chapters, which are the ones they submit to the publisher. And sometimes authors get tired of writing a book well before it's done.

Posted by Jon Kay at August 29, 2007 11:34 PM

Comments

Author, subject, personal recommendation, cover copy. Cover art? Almost never.

Posted by: Tully at August 30, 2007 09:36 AM

If it's a tech book, I go by publisher (positive weight to O'Reilly, Addison Wesley and Apress, avoid Wrox and SAMS at all cost). And since that's apparently all I read these days, I guess I might pick my next book based on suggestions from Centerfielders. :-)

Posted by: Scotch Drinker at August 31, 2007 08:31 AM

I have to confess. When I was very young back in the days of really cool Sci Fi cover artwork, I often picked Sci Fi based on Title and Artwork. Remember those awesome covers to Heinlein, Anderson, Ellison, Herbert etc.? I wish I kept those first editions, but time and handling destroyed them. There was something surreal about the earler artists of Sci Fi.

Now it's author, or reviews and in the case of interior design, art books, nature, photography etc., I love to thumb through the book before I buy it and place on coffee table.

Then comes word of mouth and good publishers...

and Tully

Posted by: Maxtrue at September 1, 2007 01:20 PM

Centerfield

A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics

August 29, 2007

How Do You Choose Books To Read?