How to choose books to read

I am the kind of person who reads a bit everyday. Lately I have come across really good books, and improved my criteria to choose books. This is something I used to struggle with.

I hope other people finding this post helpful. If you do, then I’d love to hear about it (you can use the comments below!). I’m also thinking on writing more about reading and/or some book recommendations. If you’d like to see that on the blog, let me know!

---

The algorithm goes like this:

1. Find potential books to read
2. Keep them together
3. Choose which ones to read

---

1. Find potential books to read

Here are some suggestions on how to do this:

• Ask friends and family for recommendations they think you’d enjoy.
• Search “best books on X topic/genre”.
• Take suggestions from blogs or people you follow online.
• Look for more titles by an author of a book you’ve liked.
• If a book you’re reading (and enjoying) mentions another book, look it up.
• At bookshops and libraries, have look at titles that you may enjoy to get more ideas.

2. Keep them together

This can be in a physical or virtual list. The important part is to have them all written down and kept in the same place.

• I do this in my Goodreads .
  • Whenever I select a book by means of #1 , I look it up there.
  • If it looks promising, I’ll add it to my Want To Read list.
• Using instead an Amazon Wish list seems also a good idea for this.

3. Choose which ones to read

• As a rule of thumb, I’ll only read a book from my list if the Goodreads rating is at least 4. (The rating in Amazon, with some adjustment, should work fine too. It tends to be a bit higher.) This minimum seems to be working pretty well for me:
  • I have enough books in my list which meet the criteria.
  • I don’t have too many books in it either (Indeed, most books that I look up don’t get to 4 stars, so this number work as a filter.)
  • I very often enjoy the books meeting the criteria, in other words, I don’t regret buying/reading them.
• Reading the reviews in GoodReads (or Amazon) is helpful if you’re concerned with a particular aspect of the book.
  
• I also don’t like to read consecutively two books by the same author or on the same topic. Why?
  • I may get a bit tired of the topic/style of the author.
  • The second book may be very good too, but not as great as the first one. I may underappreciate it.
  • I have enough books in my list to do this. If you’re short on books to read, you can probably skip this point.

Pro tip: reading samples (on a Kindle)

If you have a Kindle (which I highly recommend if you read often), you can get a sample of a book. For free, obviously. This option is available in the Amazon store, just next to the Buy button. I’ve done this a few times, and it works okay. You get about two chapter of the book for free, which is sometimes enough to tell if you’d like the whole book.

---