How to decide the next book to read

Someone could think that I am a bit like the main character in “Sex and the City” who always coming to new questions for her newspaper column. As seasons went, these questions in what once was an original TV series became increasingly irritating. But believe me that this is a genuine question I pondered for some time.

During this week I came across a couple of answers. The first was in this Guardian article on the page 99 test. The idea is "open the book to page ninety-nine and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you" (Ford Madox Ford). A new website (page99test.com) is coming up shortly to carry out this idea in which after reading the page readers would be invited to whether they would be interested in reading the rest. Similarly, in page99test.blogspot.com they invite American authors and university professors (I believe) to test the idea on selected books. I just performed the page 99 test back trying it with a few books I read (and a couple I couldn’t finish) and it seems a like a good idea.

Of course, in the internet age you can have this question answered for you. Which book will show you books according to your preferences. I tried it briefly and not so sure whether it would work. But it could be a useful tool anyway. The number of books considered is simply amazing.

Another online option is What should I read next? Just input a book you liked and given other people’s reading list you will get several suggestions. I think it is overall not bad although some of the replies are nonsense (a “The Catcher in the Rye” search leads to Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” and “Harry Potter”, really?).

For similar sites, please see this great post.

In the last week I learnt that Amazon released “Kindle for PC” as a free application. Therefore, you can download on your computer the sample of every book in Kindle form in Amazon (apart from the free books that they offer) and read for free usually the first pages / couple of pages in order to have a better idea on a book you are interested to get hold / buy.

(some of my book shelves)

My approach? Not different from most people’s I guess. I follow suggestions from friends and also go for books that draw my attention in newspapers reviews / internet reviews. Then, when I like an author I like to read most of his/her books and see how these vary and his career developed. However, this led me to several disappointments in the past. Normally, following suggestions or authors I enjoy I get most books from my local second-hand charity shop and buy the rest (those which are no likely to appear in that shop) brand new. Normally this means I have a pile to read and I am never short of options. But in the future, for books that I am not so sure about, I’ll try the options described above.