How do you decide what to read next?

[Doug]

Dan wrote: "Sue wrote: "Doug - I took a look at your bedside stack picture. Impressive!"

Yes, I agree with Sue: an impressive pile. And also an impressive architectural feat."

Thanx! Maybe Marc would be kind enough to post it here for me (since I am inept!)

[Neil]

Dan - thanks for that - great to read.

Doug - impressive!

Most of my reading is on my Kindle (partly because we have run out of book space in the house and my wife keeps buying more), so my physical to-read pile is by the armchair I use in the lounge and only has 12 books in it. I feel vaguely inadequate. My actual to-read pile lives in cyberspace and has over 100 books on it, although it needs a good edit.

[Kathleen]

Oh, my kind of people. All of my bookshelves have stacks of books on top of them. There is a stack next to the bed, and my desk is surrounded by stacks of them. I love looking at them--how each of them holds yet to be discovered worlds. They're like my favorite interior decoration. I never want to give up my stacks of books. It's like having a well-stocked fridge. Plenty for me and plenty to share ... and like Dan says, plenty of incentive to live forever!

[LindaJ^]

Dan, I love and agree with your thought that hundreds of unread books provide an incentive to live forever!

[Nadine in California]

Dan wrote: "Sue wrote: "Doug - I took a look at your bedside stack picture. Impressive!"

Yes, I agree with Sue: an impressive pile. And also an impressive architectural feat."

Impressive pile - the lamp looks a little worried though :)

[Lagullande]

LindaJ^ wrote: "Dan, I love and agree with your thought that hundreds of unread books provide an incentive to live forever!"

I am very conscious of the books I have next to my bed, ever since my sister-in-law gave a wonderful eulogy at my mother-in-law's funeral based on the books she left there, both read and unread. It was a fantastic mix, which summed her up so well, including poetry, Seneca, Modern Greek textbooks, detective novels and a Welsh Bible.

[Dan]

Lagullande wrote: "I am very conscious of the books I have next to my bed, ever since my sister-in-law gave a wonderful eulogy at my mother-in-law's funeral based on the books she left there"

Your mother-in-law sounds like she combined formidable intellect with formidable curiosity. What a lovely legacy to her children.

[Dan]

How's this for perfect: from today's Irish Times, an article by John Boyne on Shelfies with Irish writers: how the literati keep their libraries in order, available here.

[LindaJ^]

Thanks Dan for that delightful article.

[Whitney]

I am jealous of the stack! I had to eliminate mine after getting a cat with a compulsion to push everything off of the nightstand. He also used to clear entire shelves of their books while I was at work, but thankfully he usually focussed on the mass market paperbacks.

[Doug]

Dan wrote: "How's this for perfect: from today's Irish Times, an article by John Boyne on Shelfies with Irish writers: how the literati keep their libraries in order, available here."

And another good excuse to plug April's group read of Boyne's fantastic 'The Heart's Invisible Furies', which begins tomorrow!

[Lily]

@14Marc wrote: "...I donate the rest to charities or to our Little Free Library system...."

Was browsing through a friend's Facebook page this morning and a picture including Todd Bol from 2016 of the Little Free Library Festival in Minnehaha Park, MN, reminded me that I had never come back to this to share a couple of links about LFL and Todd that appeared in the NYT this fall. I stumbled across these at Thanksgiving time; I clearly had been out of touch about LFL with my MN/WI friends.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/bo... -- NYT article about the Little Free Library movement.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/ob... -- Todd’s obituary in NYT

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local... -- subway station link

https://littlefreelibrary.org/today-s... -- Today show link

[Lark]

I have a library in every room, most of them unread by at least 1 of the 4 people in my family. I developed this library of unread books purposefully and without any guilt whatsoever because I homeschooled my kids, and it just worked amazingly well for them to have all kinds of books within arm's length. Now that my kids are almost post-teen I've continued the practice, and the whole family has a habit of wandering around the house thinking, hmm, what should I read next? It's fun because we have very different tastes but we tend to learn from one another.

To keep track of my own reading goals, I've begun to schedule myself and to start temporary GR shelves by month--"2019-01" for example, to keep track of what I want to finish by the end of this month. At the end of the month the shelf disappears and the books are either read and reviewed, or shifted to the following month, or dropped. It's working pretty well.

[Ellen]

I have many piles. I learn about books from GR and from reviews and from writer interviews and other books as well as books I win. I also alternate amongst poetry, fiction, and non-fiction (I've been reading books on race in the U.S. and racism, a topic I'm particularly drawn to). I have many lists as well but despite all my planning I generally pick my next read on a whim. Once I made a book a "must read" I usually rebel against my own command! So despite all my planning, my reading tends to be haphazard, although I'm clearly drawn to certain topics.

[Hugh]

I succeeded in getting my to-read shelf down to 14 books earlier this week, which is as few as there have been since 2014, when I was very new to GR. I have just picked up my copy of Ducks, Newburyport, and the Booker longlist will soon be upon us, so I can't see it going much lower for a while...

[Marc]

Ellie, I do that very same thing: "... rebel against my own command!" I need some sort of balance between planned reading and spontaneous reading. I'll set aside priority reads next to the bed and then only take up 1 or 2 out of 8 to 10.

14, Hugh?!!! I'm pretty sure I'll die before I get anywhere near that number. I'm struggling to get it under 100 (for the ones I already own and not including ebooks).

[Neil]

I pick at random from my GR TBR - I hardly ever know what I will read next until 10 seconds before I start it, or maybe a minute if I have to download it onto my Kindle first. The exception is when reading prize lists, but even then the order is random.

[Karin]

My goodreads TBR is more a collection of books that caught my eye. It's well over 1200 at this point, and I certainly won't read them all. I like to just use it as a list of books that sounded interesting at one point or another.

I'm trying my best to read through the unread books on my shelves at home, but I keep getting sucked in to the books at the library. I moved last year, and moving my book collection was pretty miserable. I live in a town with a wonderful library system. I'm trying to reduce the # of books I own by as much as I can, but I also still want to read those books before I get rid of them.

[Hugh]

The 14 is the ones I actually have on the shelf! The long term list is still at least 200..

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees]

I purposely leave most of my bookshelves unsorted, and then resort to an elaborate version of eeny-miney-moe to pick my next book.

Recently, though, I decided to try and read through one particular shelf, which, along with GR group reads, has taken quite a while to get through. As an example of the randomness of my shelves, the last few I've read from that particular shelf were

Homo Faber by Max Frisch
Samuel Johnson by Walter Jackson Bate
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré
Plexus by Henry Miller

From that same shelf, I'm currently reading The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse, and next up is The Emergence of Greek Democracy, 800-400 B.C. by W.G. Forrest.

[Nadine in California]

Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by choice that I can't choose - especially if I've just finished a mind-blower book. I'm like a chicken without a head.

[Kathy]

I am a total impulse reader. I have two or three a month that I read with a group but the rest I read depending upon my interest at the moment. Too much planning takes away the pleasure of reading for me.

[Kellyn]

I have always been a cross between a planner and impulse reader. My TBR is super long, so that's the "planner" part, but then I "impulsively" decide which book to read next from the list, rather than going in order. My TBR has always consisted of books recommended to me by friends or school required reading lists, and I've never bothered to pay attention to the cover or blurb/synopsis (I like to just dive right in without being influenced by the cover or the blurb/synopsis or reviews).

Lately, I've decided to read more self-published books, and since those have not been recommended to me and are not on required reading lists, I find myself reading blurbs and having to decide what to read next based on what *I* want to read. It's so weird. My goal-driven/to-do-list-loving self just does not know what to do with all that freedom.

[Lesley]

I listen to the ABC RN and their Bookshows. Any books that interest me I first check on Goodreads, and if I am still interested, then check my EBOOK platforms , Borrowbox and Overdrive. If one has it, I either borrow or reserve. If neither have it, but one gives me the option, I recommend it for purchase. I often check EBOOK platforms for 'new to library'. The if one appeals, I check it out on Goodreads. I am retired, so have the time, and it's all free. All afternoon I lie in the aircon, and read my finds..

[Tea73]

I have yet to consolidate my TBR recommendations from my lap top and what I stick on Goodreads. Most recommendations come from friends and family and one message board I frequent. Occasionally an NPR review will really sell a book. I belong to one on line book club so those books will occasionally have to get bumped ahead of books I'd prefer to read. Some books get read sooner because they are on my Kindle and get read in the subway and gym, while most of my reading is with paper books which I prefer. The order is really just what I am in the mood for and/or what is at the library or on my bedside table.

[Dorottya]

I learnt that I read more / more quality books if I don't leave every read up to mood or faith, because in that case I can suffer from "abundance of choice fatigue" or I get scared by longer reads so I opt for shorter or lighter books, when I actually like more hard hitting ones. But I don't like having it prescribed which books exactly to read.

So I would say 75% of my reading comes from challenges and readathons with prompts. I have my own TBR challenge where I draw from a glass with pieces of paper on which I wrote my own prompts, and from time to time I participate in readathons which give prompts that are vague enough so I can choose a book that I like and not too theme oriented...

I also decide to take down my physical TBR, because I bought a lot of books and I kept reading shorter ebooks, so at one point I had around 115 unread books, which is insane... so some of my reading is based around reading the books I already own.

But at times, I am reading something I just feel like reading. These are usually nonfiction books from and about celebrities I like, topics I am really interested in... or just funny books (usually short-format funny books, like children's book parodies, or something like the bunny suicide series). Or if I get a book as a gift I have been dying to read.