How do you discover books?
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I used to enjoy using Goodreads but it's turned into crap - too many books not even **published ** (or written!) yet are given high marks, because reasons.
I found https://beta.thestorygraph.com/ which looks neat.
Has anyone found a good alternative site to discover books you might like?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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I used to really rely on Goodreads but yeah - it's not as useful as it used to be. I've never heard of The StoryGraph (which I'm now going to check out!) and have mostly relied on friends or favorite authors' new books when the reading bug manages to bite me.
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I never liked the UI on the GoodReads site. I always wanted to like it because I liked it in theory but...it never became something I used.
So for me book discovery has always been word of mouth. But also.... I learn about a lot of books outside of sci-fi/fantasy through Ryan Holiday's email digest. He sends out an email every quarter with his favorite books from the past three months and why they're his favorites. They range from books on stoicism (which is what he writes himself so there's often at least one of those), philosophy in general, to history, and socio-politics.
I do a good enough job keeping up the fiction reading but his list really helps me flesh out the rest.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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Mostly, I go to the bookstore and wander the shelves, looking at covers, cover copy, and occasionally opening up to the first few pages. I have never found Goodreads useful at all, and while I do listen to recommendations from people who I know have similar interests or enjoy similar things, the vast majority of books I've discovered are just...picking one up, reading a bit, and going, heeeey.
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I have an aunt who is an editor at Penguin Random Books. She sends me stuff in the mail.
Though not since Covid started since she isn't allowed in the physical offices.
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This podcast: https://www.historyextra.com/
A lot of the episodes are interviews with authors. Yes this is only good for non-fiction.
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You guys.
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I just thought it was really cool if I could rate a bunch of books I've read and then get honest suggestions and recommendations created by an engine about other titles that are similar to those.
Or to point me to reading lists by other people who share enough of my preferences so I can see what they've discovered since I might like them as well.
But GoodReads just can't do that. In a way it's a victim of its own popularity since its grading system is being abused to point to books I don't care about... or worse, which don't exist. Like, wtf do you mean Doors of Stone has 606 reviews right now and a 3.7 score. How ?
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I still use goodreads, but I look at lists rather than individual books. Something is bound to strike me. It's how I found Broken Empire and A Land Fit for Heroes.
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I have a couple of 'interesting books coming out this month' sites I like. So every month I go to them, read their descriptions of the interesting books and then buy whatever strikes my fancy.
I'm still pretty sad that the Barnes and Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy blog died. Joel Cunningham had my number. He does stuff over at Tor.com now, but they didn't bother doing a list this month for anything other than YA novels! Jerks.
maximum craveability
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Right now I tend to trawl Goodreads and reddit/r/books for book recommendations but I'll always have a fondness for just wandering around a bookshop and checking out all the books I don't recognize.
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@TheOnceler said in How do you discover books?:
I have a couple of 'interesting books coming out this month' sites I like. So every month I go to them, read their descriptions of the interesting books and then buy whatever strikes my fancy.
I'm still pretty sad that the Barnes and Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy blog died. Joel Cunningham had my number. He does stuff over at Tor.com now, but they didn't bother doing a list this month for anything other than YA novels! Jerks.
What are the sites you use?
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Mind you, I have several "ins" for how I can see the books that are upcoming. Mostly book distributors such as Baker & Taylor and Midwest Tapes. But there are a couple of things that we use & give out to the public to see to see a decent number of what books are upcoming:
Neither of them are perfect, but it's something. Most retail sites also have some kind of "what's upcoming", but it's also not accurate these days. The Covid closings have pushed a lot of publication dates back by months if not a year+.
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https://www.fantasticfiction.com/ seems to be the sorta alternative to goodreads.
Still hard to narrow down, but, better than nothing. -
Uh, I didn't discover books. They've been a thing for a long time. Like, decades. At least.
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Referrals. Always.
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Personally, I message @Sparks about 2 days before I have to fly somewhere and make her tell me what I should download onto my Kindle. Then I buy a ton of books all at once and read them over the following months. Then I buy the series or sequels if they exist.
Eventually I run out of books, and I flail until @Sparks answers my messages again.
It's a system. It's maybe not a great system, but it's a system.
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Goodreads works well enough for me. Pre-release review spamming is a bit annoying but not a deal breaker by any stretch.
Most of what I read is sci-fi (reading Xenogenesis/Lilith's Brood at the moment), and The Verge puts out a decent list of sci-fi books that have come out recently every now and again.
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Arise, thread, from the dead!
So recently I discovered there's a name for one of my favorite tropes in literature; progressive fantasy. That's the kind of book where a protagonist starts from humble beginnings, they go to some kind of school or undergo training, and then by the end of the story they become badass.
Examples of this include the Feist's Magician circle, Raven's Shadow by Anthony Ryan, Red Rising by Pierce Brown, The Magicians by Lev Grossman, etc.
I was also made aware there's a LitRPG 'free' genre out there that often follows those same tropes but the quality is very touch-and-go (as they are often written by unpublished, amateur authors so you get what you get) and they are actually a bit more mechanical than I'd like. Like... some of them actually have character sheets attached to their novels, which is too much.
Does anyone have book recommendations to make?
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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I am FB friends with a lot of the authors I love; Tamoria Pierce, Mindy Klasky, Kelley Armostrong, Robin Hobb (aka Megan Lindhom), Kate Quinn, Lea Nolan, Kristen Britain, and several others. That's because at some point I used be part of the Maryland Romance Writers group, which was part of the Romance Writers of America. I attended monthly meetings with them because I had aspirations of writing at some point and then life got mired down in a big bog. From that attendance, I know some of them personally, and have either beta read their books or helped them with some research (Kate Quinn - The Rose Code - my husband gave her a tour of the car barn of Henry Petronis so she could see his his antique European Car collection and have Mr. Henry answer some of her car questions. Henry invented the screw on oil filter for cars.)
So, I follow them. See what they are reading, what they are releasing, learn about other places where they promote their books, or where sales might be going on, like Book Bub: https://www.bookbub.com/welcome -- where you can get titles either for free or for a cheaper price than the big box stores (or because the big box stores are using Book Bub to promote those sales). It's easy to try a new author through Book Bub with a lower risk of investment.
They will often recommend other authors because a lot of promoting your own books is also promoting the sales of others.
