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Americans, Europeans, others, how do you find new reading material


Lady Winter Rose

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May I ask you how do you find new stuff to read? I usually browse through pub's web page or search the library.... do you use smashwords or other free stuff web bookoutlets? Do you read new books or old ones? How many of your friends do read?

Do you read blogs-novels? Are they still the thing?

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- recommendations from like-minded friends and acquaintances 

- goodreads system of recommendations, mostly via similar books to ones I've already read

- simply googling. Just by typing i.e. "intrigue fantasy books" I've found a few cool books which are now added to my to-read list

- checking out other works from authors whose books I've liked so far
 

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For fiction, I lean pretty heavily on recommendations and criticism on this forum.  There are some really great threads that are 5-10 years old or more that have excellent commentary.  For nonfiction, I start with googling a given topic and checking out goodreads, if that doesn't give me a clear idea of where to start then I either ask people I know with similar interests, or ask staff at local bookstores.  

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On 1/19/2021 at 12:04 AM, The Marquis de Leech said:

My bigger issue is keeping my To Read pile under control.

This. So much has been written, and so many great works, for the last 3 millennia, that I'll die before I run out of things to read. I should become close to immortal to be in a situation where I have to wonder if there are any good books left for me to read.

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I hear about books from coworkers and friends or see mentions online at various sites.  I have a Fire that I read ebooks on so when I am on the amazon site getting a book I will spend most of my time 'browsing' other books that look interesting.  I also wander the book shop and see what I can find. 

I have found many books that I like here on this site. 

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Up through the turn of the century and the advent of the Web 2.0, my best sources of new authors included first the local new and used bookstores, where you were at the mercy of whatever the buyers had selected to stock the shelves.  Used bookstores were actually pretty good sources if you had the time to work your way through the stacks of whatever random stuff they had in stock.  And of course, the books on display were often uncategorized, such as the memorable bookstore in Lucky Plaza in Singapore circa 1985 who kept the Heinlein stuff intermixed with erotica and gardening books.

The second source was the slew of SciFi magazines (Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Azimov's).  They provided a selection of different authors, and the short works exposed the reader to their style.  If you found a style you liked, you then when hunting for their other books.  So for instance Lois McMaster Bujold's books in the 1980s and 1990s had ridiculous Baen covers, and without her magazine stories, I would not have picked up one of her books.

Once the web became a widely-used phenomenon, the ability to find places like this one gave rise to a greater depth and breadth of exposure to different authors by way of other readers' opinions.  

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I used to visit bookstores (whenever I was in a city it was a must) and buy fantasy/sf magazines. Today it's mostly the web. And friends, now and then.

And what an unexpected source! Yesterday I found from a spokeswoman of Russian Ministry of Foreign Afairs, that Mein Kampf had been published in Poland. She only forgot to add it's historical study with critical comments, but its good to know. Got to get it.

 

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Basically I don't.  Back when epic fantasy vs. New Weird topics (and controversies) were frequent in the blog and forum scene I was all about finding something new but I guess I just became exhausted of it all and now prefer to stick to a handful of favorites and those who influenced them.  Although given a lot of these favorites have difficulty publishing like they once did maybe I should make more of an effort to find new stuff, but for now I just can't find the motivation.       

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- recommendations from friends and family

- book podcast called Backlisted

- what's being discussed in the pop culture zeitgeist so I don't feel left out (also getting the Witcher books out of the library is cheaper than signing up to Netflix)

- popsugar.com's annual reading list (they have weird prompts like 'a book with a bird on the cover' , 'a book with gold, silver or bronze in the title' or 'the first book you touch on the shelf at random')

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Forums like this one, reddit, bestfantasybooks etc.

My problem I only read German fiction books and I am always looking for series that have been fully translated. I have started so many promising ones just to get cancelled in case the books had not sold well enough on the German market.

So I have bought quite a lot of older complete series to have some kind of a backlog and keep adding whenever I find out about something interesting that had been translated. The last examples have been Anna Stephens - Godblind trilogy and Brian McClellan - Powdermage trilogy.

 

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