Someone asked below how I happen upon the books I read.
Like everything else in my life – randomly.
I do have a stack of books on my desk that are crying out to be read, books that people have very kindly sent me for review. I am about six months behind on all of that, and I apologize. Just think, though – in a couple of months when I finally get to it, you will see (God willing) a bit of a surge in sales at that late date!
But..on the books. As I’ve said before, I scan the “New Books” shelves at the library every time I go. I scan the NYTimes Book Review, which is largely useless, but I do scan it. More helpful to me is drifting through Amazon through links to what readers who liked books I liked also like and so on. There are other book-centered social sites (like Library Thing, which I briefly had as a widget on the other blog before people complained it kept crashing their computers), but I just find Amazon very useful in that way.
In the last 18 months of my Italy-obsession, I’ve culled books – fiction and non-fiction – on that score from the pertinent threads – there are three – at the Slow Travel discussion forum.
The NYRB books trail was started when I noticed some lovely-looking children’s title from that line at the library, came home and then started looking at what they were reprinting – I knew they had the JF Powers books (knew because grrr…..I tried to get them for Loyola Classics, but NRYB had a deal for exclusive rights….grrrr….), but beyond that, I didn’t know. So I just strolled through their online catalogue and made a list in my little Moleskine notebook (required Writer Accessory) of what looked interesting.
And when I’m reading nonfiction – which tends to be church history of all types – I take notes from the footnotes of interesting books. Which then I hardly ever read, because, you know…you can’t read everything. Tragically.