When the time comes to choose a book, what criteria do you use? A friend’s recommendation, the author, the cover, etc.
Share why if you wish.
Asking — and answering — life's interesting questions
When the time comes to choose a book, what criteria do you use? A friend’s recommendation, the author, the cover, etc.
Share why if you wish.
In my opinion, choosing a book is one of the best parts of the reading experience. An unread book is like a wrapped present — it can be almost anything!
In my house, I am surrounded by books of all sorts. To decide on a particular book, I generally take some cue from the world at large. For example, I just started a book by Tim Dorsey, because I have a stack of his books that I’ve never read, and I just heard the sad news of his passing.
Or I might choose to read a nonfiction book based on something in the news. Or when I am reading a biography, I might opt to read a book that was influential to the subject. And so on.
A catchy title about a topic I care about gets me to take a book off a bookstore shelf. A quick skim of the table of contents, the blurb on the back cover, along with the price usually convince me one way or another. But chances of a purchase increase if the book is designed well: great font, pages of the right thickness, a “new book smell” (yup, the smell), and a good spine. Oh, and I read (almost exclusively) non-fiction.
If I don’t know the author, then I always read the first several paragraphs before deciding if I’d like to read it.