Where do you hear about the books you read? I like browsing the stacks as much as the next reader, but sometimes it's nice to be offered some solid suggestions for the nightstand, right? I’ve been thinking about this question for the past few months as I’ve been working on this blog. Here are my answers:
- My colleagues. We’re English teachers, so we read and talk about books a lot.
- My mom and my siblings, all enthusiastic readers.
- The biblioracle on twitter (@biblioracle) and via The Morning News website. Once in a while, he’ll invite you to list for him the last five books you’ve read and then he’ll give you the next one you should read. It’s fun to see what others are reading and what his recommendations are. Here’s an (older) example.
- Awards lists. The Man Booker list and the National Book Award list especially.
It’s titles from the Tournament of Books list that I’m planning on writing about for the next month or so. There’s more information about the idea of the Tournament of Books via the link above, but suffice it to say that there are a number of books I have read because of the T.O.B list that I’m not sure I would have read otherwise.
This year I am trying to read as many of the books as I can before the competition begins. I’ve read The Lowlands and Long Division and am working on The Son right now, but for my first post about the T.O.B. titles I want to talk about the brilliant A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.
But here’s the problem: I’ve already written 300 words just introducing the topic, and I haven’t even started talking about the book itself, and I feel like these posts are too long in general…. So, I’m going to leave you here for now.
Go visit the The Morning News site and check out the Tournament of Books. In the meanwhile I will collect my thoughts about A Tale for the Time Being and we’ll meet back here in a few days. Good? Good.
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