How to Choose and Why

In a world in which there are so many books and there's so little time, how does one choose which books to read?

Think about it--hundreds (maybe thousands?) of good books are published every year. So what makes one book stand out among the others? In the competition for your attention, how do you choose a good book to read?

In my case, a lot of it depends on genre. I write mysteries, so I often read them and other types of crime fiction. But I don't want to limit myself to them. So I often turn to mainstream fiction for alternatives.

Science fiction was once a passion for me, but I've been reading it less lately. Not because it isn't good, mind you. Some of my favorite authors (Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. LeGuin, Kurt Vonnegut, Spider Robinson and Douglas Adams come to mind) write (or wrote) sci fi. And I watch sci fi on television. But there are so many books to choose from--and there's so little time.

Sometimes I get interested in books based on reviews, but I suspect I'm in the minority. Ironically, I don't think I've ever picked up a book based on its cover (though authors tend to think a good cover makes all the difference where sales and promotion are concerned).

I'll note other people's book recommendations, keeping the source (and his or her proclivities and interests) in mind. But so many people recommend so many different books--and what they like doesn't always square with my preferences.

I have certain favorite authors whose work I read every time a new book comes out. Other authors I read sporadically--usually, because they have such huge bodies of work, I'd have to devote my life to catching up with everything on their backlists.

There are several classic books I've yet to read. I went through a period where I read loads of them--The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Slaughterhouse-Five, Sister Carrie, An American Tragedy (yeah, I was in a Dreiser phase), The Great Gatsby (for the second or third time), The Catcher in the Rye (for the third or fourth), Moby Dick (okay, I skipped over the part about dolphin and whale anatomy--but the rest, I read) and even War and Peace (it took me two and a half months, but it was worth it). But there are many others that are supposed to be great. And I still haven't read them.

I've dabbled in the satirical (Catch-22, Then We Came to the End), memoirs (The Glass Castle, A Girl Named Zippy), the off-beat (P.S. Your Cat is Dead, Cloud Atlas and On the Road--which is both off-beat and Beat), but I've never read James Joyce or William S. Burroughs. I've read John Steinbeck's East of Eden, but not The Grapes of Wrath.

And I haven't even touched on the childrens'/young adult books that are supposed to be so good. Among my favorites: The Phantom Tollbooth, A Wrinkle in Time and most of the Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. I keep meaning to pick up Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events books, but (being perverse) am determined to maintain a Harry Potter-free existence (book-wise and movie-wise).

Then, of course, there's biography (I've read a few about Marilyn Monroe and one about Montgomery Clift) and loads of worthy non-fiction (I keep meaning to get to The Devil in the White City) to read on top of that.

As a result, I've ended up with a long list of books I'd like to read--and any day now, I will.

So, I'll put it to you, readers. How do you choose what you're going to read?