How do you find books to read?

Recommendations for recommendations

I was a guest speaker for a course on publishing last week, and one student asked me how I find books to read, because she was having the damnedest time. What a good question! I rambled a bit (“find your subculture, and then ask those people”), and then, after the course, I asked other people the same question.

I could angle this newsletter by discussing the ills of contemporary books coverage, but why not focus on the positive?

A few presumptions to start:

• It has become harder to find ideas for good books to read over the past few years. Previously reliable sources are less reliable, or less interesting, or don’t exist anymore.

• The contemporary fiction craze for certain genres has created an even more bifurcated landscape for readers than existed previously: for instance, Alchemised and The Correspondent are two insanely successful novels of this season, but I was not made aware of either through my usual channels (what I read, headlines I scan, who I follow on social media, etc.). When I discovered their popularity I felt idiotic for not knowing about them sooner. Now obviously there are huge numbers of readers who have been inundated with news of these books; they and I simply spend time with entirely different publishing/review/reader ecosystems.
  

• For those of us who are interested in finding out more about serious and narrative nonfiction and literary fiction, the old ways merit fewer gems. Or—and this is of course an entirely possible thesis for this entire newsletter—this is just really about me: I am just not finding them or reading the things I probably should be.
  

Nonetheless! All these explanations and caveats aside, I thought it would be useful to offer recommendations for good book recommendations. So I asked some people who share similar reading tastes as me, and combined their recommendations with my go-tos, and then culled them all down to something manageable. Because these lists often become way too long, and thus overwhelming, I studiously restricted each category to five, and didn’t include all possible categories.

Sound off in the comments to add more!

1.) Publisher catalogs and newsletters. This is a superb method for a few reasons: it helps to create more brand recognition of certain presses that are publishing the sorts of things you might like, and it also might bring you to purchase books from them directly, which is a huge boon to publishers, particularly small ones. You don’t necessarily need to get catalogs per se, you could instead simply sign up for newsletter from those folks. Here are some I recommend:

Galley Beggar Press
Biblioasis
Heyday Books
Belt Publishing (I mean I couldn’t not include it)
Paul Dry Books

2.) Curated lists and newsletters from booksellers: Find a bookseller or store whose collection seems to connect with you, and then just follow their suggestions (of course staff picks at your fave store can accomplish this as well)

Leviathan Bookstore newsletter
Phinney Books
Powell’s
Book Marks/Lit Hub
Greenlight Staff Picks

3.) Podcasts:

TLS
LRB
Between the Covers
Backlisted
All The Books

4.) Newsletters from writers, readers, critics:

Robin Sloan
Austin Kleon
Book Club (Ron Charles)
The Process (Irina Dumitrescu)
Five Books

4.) Awards Short and Long Lists

Booker
NBCC
Women’s Prize
Pulitzer
NBA

Finally, as I do like to add my recs to this newsletter: I was stunned in the best way by The Mandelbaum Gate, which I read last week, so have just started the new biography of Spark, Electric Spark, which I really like thus far. And I read The Pit by Frank Norris, which Belt will reissue next year as part of our Revivals series (now on sale!): through it I revived my old grad school/dissertation-focus love of the naturalists.

I hope this helps you find the books you are eager to meet.

Wanna work on a book proposal with me? My next course starts in January.