25 October 2008

How do you know what to read next?

I'm really never at a loss for what to read next.
In fact I've always got too many books lying around, just waiting for their chance to hop into my hands.

Part of the secret is to monitor the blogs of people like me who review books.
This morning for example, I read blog postings from Poisoned Fiction Review, Do You Write Under Your Own Name, and Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books, and they all sent me off to the online catalogue of my local library to see if I could find the books were referring to. The library is my first port of call, because it saves me money and I'm not precious about having to keep the books I read.

If you are not sure about what blogs to follow, have a look at the list I have on my blog roll. There's a link up at the top of the page called Blogs I'm watching. They are all generally there because they talk about books, and nearly all of them get me several good titles to follow up every week. They are also on there because they talk about crime fiction, murder mysteries and the like, which is the genre that I read almost exclusively.

You might also like to browse my books reviews which is a ranked list of books I have written about on this blog this year. They are listed as Smik's Reviews, and you will find that link also at the top of the page. Smik's Reviews has an RSS feed that you can add to your PageFlakes or whatever so that when I add a new book you get an alert.

Apart from the books I review, I also sometime write, as I did yesterday about books that are selling well in Australia, or if you are looking for crime fiction by Australian authors, you could check the postings that are marked Australian author, or go back to the Carnival of Criminal Minds posting where I was the host site.

Of course you could always choose to get the postings of MYSTERIES IN PARADISE by email or RSS. There are also links to them in the top menu bar. The one I particularly like is FeedMyInbox which sends out a daily digest of postings on this blog.

I do read a lot of recently published crime fiction, but you'll note that occasionally an older book crops up. For example I write about Forgotten books, and I am reading for my own Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. You'll find references to them in the blocks in the right hand margin.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kerrie I use review sites like yours for adding books to my 'read later' list rather than a 'read next' list as I tend not to buy books when they're newly released (I'm a bit of a cheapskate) and my library is not terribly helpful when it comes to new releases. Eventually the books are released in small paperback format or start showing up in second hand shops and then I pounce :)

But since I joined bookmooch I have been piling up my TBRs and now have about 70 awaiting me so I don't really struggle finding what to read next.

Marg said...

My decision on what to read next is usually based on which book is due back at the library next, or which review book is due next. I also read along with one group so I need to try and fit that book in as well, although I am not always successful with that one. If I still have a gap in the schedule then I will look at my bookshelves and see the multitude of books that are there that I haven't already read and choose one of those. Occasionally I hear about a book that I think I must read now, usually from other blogs, but that doesn't really happen all that often.

kathy d. said...

Your blog is one to look forward to every day. It's always interesting and has many good book suggestions and reviews.

It's one of six that I read daily and look forward to like a good dessert, with pen and paper in hand.

Kerrie said...

Kathy, I am so glad you enjoy it. I hope you don't find my multiple postings some days too overwhelming

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