Friday, January 22, 2010

Recommended reading


How do you choose your next book? Sometimes a new book just bought or just borrowed from work leaps over the entire tbr pile in a single bound & demands to be read. Sometimes the next book seems to lead on quite naturally from the book just finished. My next book is often chosen because of a recommendation from my online reading group. I’ve been a member for five years & we’re a small group of about 30. Some of us post almost every day, some join in when they have time or when a book or author sparks a response, usually along the lines of “Oh, I love her, have you read...”. Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey (reviewed below) was the result of enthusiastic raves from two of our members. I bought it some time ago on the strength of that but another mention recently sent me running to the shelves to find it & read it. In the last couple of days, Elizabeth Von Arnim’s All The Dogs Of My Life & Lytton Strachey’s Queen Victoria have been read & recommended. I have the Strachey so that’s moving towards my reading table tbr pile & I read the Von Arnim years ago but would like to read it again even though I’m a cat person rather than a dog lover. Another member of the group discovered P G Wodehouse last year & has been raving about Jeeves & Bertie Wooster ever since. I’ve picked up a remaindered copy of The Inimitable Jeeves very cheaply & will be reading it soon. The same person is my infallible guide to any BBC classic serial shown in the UK. We don’t see these in Australia for at least a year after they’re broadcast in the UK so I rely on Elaine to advise me about buying the DVD or just waiting to see it on TV. I’ve just watched the new Emma which I bought on her recommendation (review shortly) & in past years I’ve enjoyed Jane Eyre, Cranford & Little Dorrit months before they were shown on TV here. Little Dorrit still hasn’t made an appearance. So, how do you choose the next book? Serendipity or according to a strict system – first bought, first read? Or whichever book you happen to trip over in the hallway because your bookshelves are overflowing & you have nowhere to put it?

5 comments:

  1. I hardly ever buy new books. So I adopt books from charity shops usually. I will probably have heard a blogger talk about the book or I know of the autor, or increasingly hard to find, a Virago just because it is a Virago.
    Then there are the titles. Drowning Ruth, because my name is Ruth. When I lived in Switzerland i was starved of decent English books so the one place that sold them was the Tabac and only had one swivelly display of books. But that was where I discovered Chaim Potok so I should be grateful for that deprivation. Brian Moore was another discovery. I think I acquired his first book from Padstow Library sale. If it is only 10p and readable, I usually take it home. Years ago in the 1970s I bought an old copy of A Kid for Two Farthings for 2p. Bloomsbury have just seen fit to republish this and I feel so superior because I "discovered" it all on my own nearly 30 years ago.
    And how about browsing through LibraryThing.com?
    Find someone who has a few of your books and see what else they have. I really should update my library over there. If you want to visit me there, I'm "ruthmarler". Just checked and I have just over 500 books over there so i really should walk around the house with the laptop again and get up to date.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ooh - that's hard! I try to make every other book a Virago for my project, but otherwise it is down to whaever I have from the library and in terms of unread books knocking around at home.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ruth, my problem is too many recommendations, not too few! I'm almost afraid to discover a new blog to follow as I know I'll end up with more books to chase up. I've started Lytton Strachey's Queen Victoria & as I've just read an interview with Gillian Gill, author of We Two, a new book about V&A I may have to read that to compare & contrast.
    Verity, your challenge is definitely a good way of structuring your reading & VMCs are diverse enough that you hopefully won't get bored.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Many sources:
    Trusted friends (and bloggers) whose taste in reading is compatible. Book lists (Modern Library's top 100 books of the 20th century, etc.). Nancy Pearl's wonderful "Book Lust".

    One thing I almost never do is follow up on a recent book review. I like books to have some time to sink or swim before I pick them up.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thomas, as a fellow librarian, I'm a Nancy Pearl fan. I especially like her advice about when to give up on a book. Subtract your age from 100. If a book hasn't grabbed you by that page, move on.

    ReplyDelete