I’m a big science fiction reader. Mostly I:
- Look up lists of winners and nominees for the big awards (Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C Clarke)
- Read reviews for successive books in a series when I liked the earlier ones
- Find articles on the top SF books of all time or by year, written by respectable sources
- Get recommendations from friends who also read SF
- Occasionally post threads in the SF community here on things I’ve read and see what comes up in the comments
I recommend a fantastic niche subreddit r/printSF to you as well. I’ve found many great books there and enjoy the discussion too. Sorry for reddit but that community isn’t nearly as active here, although it definitely has the potential to be since I always see enthusiastic discussion about SF books from Lemmyngs whenever they’re brought up.
Thanks, though I’m just not going to give Reddit any more of my clicks. I left there at the first big exiguous and I’m not going back.
There aren’t a lot of posts on the SF community here, but when I’ve posted something interesting it’s gotten a lot of activity, so I know there are people reading it. Here’s one from the end of the year.
Mostly just lurking goodreads, subreddits, forums, but also signing up to some newsletters.
This is what I do too except mine is StoryGraph. I sometimes look at what other users in community are reading, look those books up and try.
Libby too has recommendations from my local libraries. I check those out.
Ask an LLM for recommendations based on what I liked to read.
This for me as well. It’s why I’m now on book 7 ofthe Terms of Enlistment series by Marko Kloos
- talking with people at some organised book events (Meetups/silent book club)
- talking with friends
- sometimes browsing Bookwyrm (fediverse Goodreads)
- scrolling through Libby
my favorite local bookstore has employee curated picks scattered around with little hand written 1 paragraph reviews on the shelf. going in there is like a reward for finishing the last thing i read. i love independent bookstores
a fun thing that works in just about any bookstore is to go straight to the penguin books section. the standard of quality from them is quite high
I basically do the same. The tiny local bookstore I like has a big table in the middle with titles picked by the owner. Something in there will be interesting. I can always just ask the owner if I’m stumped. It’s a bit easier because I’m not a single-genre reader, so I’m spoiled for choice.
Podcast interviews with authors. Sometimes citations in YouTube explainers or public debates.
And how doest thou find these podcasts
Most have been through podcasters mentioning a show they like and talking about it or having guests on from other shows. It took a pretty good amount of time to find a good collection of shows that I genuinely look forward to hearing and weed out the meh content. Here’s a list I wrote when someone had a thread asking for recommendations.
- Better Offline: Ed Zitron tearing apart how shitty the tech industry has become
- QAA Podcast: studies conspiratorial thinking (originally devoted to watching Qanon lunatics), typically hilarious
- Accidental Tech Podcast: three third-party Apple developers talking about tech, primarily in the Apple ecosystem
- Chapo Traphouse: Leftist politics, typically pretty funny
- Noble Blood: history podcast retelling stories about members of nobility in short form
- Fall of Civilizations Podcast: history podcast that dives deep into civs like Carthage and the Assyrians, etc
- TrueAnon: Leftist politics, deep dives on topics
- Last Podcast on the Left (name is a horror film reference): true crime with anecdotes, lots of diversions that might not be for everyone
- Alphabet Boys: each season deep dives a taboo action by gov agencies (FBI, ATF, etc)
- Song Exploder: deep dives on the writing and recording of songs with the musicians behind them
- What Went Wrong: deep dives on movie productions
- Behind the Bastards: deep dives on terrible people throughout history, lots of diversions that might not be for everyone
- Grumpy Old Geeks: tech and nerd news (including sci-fi media) from two cynical guys who have been in the biz for years, typically funny
I remember song exploder! I listened to it a lot when I was a kid. I’d love to listen to a podcast like that, but with authors talking about their books and explaining why they made the decisions they made
Damn, has that show been around that long? How long ago were you a kid?
This was about 12 years ago, i think. By “kid” I mean teenager.
I’m just not used to podcasts sticking around for more than four years.
I’ll ddg a topic or genre I’m interested in, “top space alien novels” or “top novels in x universe”. Or I get recommendations from the podcasts I listen to, or the shows I watch.
Generally, I consume all the material on whatever new topic or genre that is interested me at the time, and then move onto the next.
Some years ago I downloaded from the high seas some torrents accounting for more than 34,000 ebooks. I loaded them in Calibre. Now, when I want to read something new, I just mindlessly scroll through the collection with my eyes closed and pick a book at random. So far, I’ve discovered good titles with this method ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Now, if you’re talking about physical books, I tend to just wander around the bookstores or book fairs until I have my bags full and I’m too tired to walk anymore 😅.
picking things to read completely at random sounds like a huge waste of time
Only if you’re what I call a “methodic reader”, that is, someone who knows exactly what you want to read and don’t want to derange from your preferred list of genres, themes and/or authors.
In my case, I like to experiment reading from authors or genres that I don’t know, in different languages, many times using only the cover and title as a guide. I’ve discovered that things like recommendations, book clubs and social networks are not my thing. I apply the same criteria for things like manga, mahwas, webtoons and so on. So far, I can say that I’ve liked ~80% of what I’ve read.
there’s just a lot of books in the world, and a limited amount of time for you to read them. i like having at least a rough idea of how I’ll invest my time
Yes, everyone has different views about that. Personally, it’s precisely because we have limited time that I want to experience a variety of things without limiting myself to a subset of all of the literature. Many people like to read, say, mainly Sci-fi and that’s good: they know exactly what they like. Me? I tend to get bored of a particular genre or theme pretty easily, and that’s why I like to be chaotic. One more thing: I really, really dislike other people or machines telling me what to read, so whenever someone gives me a book recommendation, that book goes to the bottom of my priority list 😅.
When I’m running out of books I start asking anyone interesting that I’m talking to what they are reading. If they are into that book I buy it on the spot, while we’re still talking. Occasionally they are reading something completely shit, but I’ve hit some gems. Then you have something in common with that person which is a bonus.
Reference sections and other suggested readings from the back of books I enjoyed. This is mostly for more non-fiction books but its helpful to see what the author recommends. I have often found books I love from his method and the really good ones get recommended from multiple related books. Especially if its for some interested that is new to you.
@Shkshkshk I used to use reddit, ive seen answers to one of my reddit posts like the same exact list made from the comments from chatgpt when asking for suggestions based off books i like so it might actually be helpful or it mightve pulled directly from my post where I stated my preferences and asked for suggestions. It was weirdly close to the old post.
With difficulty. I consult several guides. Give the highly rated stuff a read.
Reddit printsf is good.
Reddit litrpg
Winners and nominees of awards. Nebula. Bram Stoker…
Goodreads.
Royal road
Scp foundation
Fimfiction
Ultimately, find a good author, read their everything.
The library. You can also pay them to buy books for you, which stay in their system.
I hit up ebook sellers. They give you like 10% of the book as a free trial. That’s more than enough for me to decide if I’m interested.
If you have a Prime membership, you get 1 free Kindle book a month from a short list of “first reads” (some months you get a bonus title too).
I’ll also get on Libby and pull up my favorite categories and filter for available now.
