When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.Do you read book reviews? Do they influence you? How do you find out about new books? Authors? Can you get to your local bookseller. I’ve always been a fan of staff picks. Do you have that friend or cousin or acquaintance whose always recommending a new book? Do you go the library and take out books wrapped in glassine, the pages worn smooth as stones. When you find an author you love do you devour their backlist? Do you read blurbs on the back of books, the first line or paragraph? Author photo?
How the hell do you choose a book?
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Betsy Lerner 
“How the hell do you choose a book?”
Parsimoniously. I have so little time, so little money, and too many books already.
All of the above – as is evidenced by my backlog.
I read reviews, go off social media, explore the front tables of bookstores – although I usually know what’s hot b/c of lists. I’ll buy the backlists of favorite authors, too. Recently I discovered I didn’t have one of Kaye Gibbon’s books. I found out by re-checking my own bookshelves I didn’t have DIVINING WOMEN. Of course I bought it immediately, just last week. I go off word of mouth, and trades. I particularly like to read books that have received honors, made the lists – not all of them – but those that seem appealing to my own tastes, just to see how the author writes.
I buy books that have something to do with a current project. Recently I read News of the World by Paulette Jiles, and then I looked at her backlist. To my surprise one of her other books, ENEMY WOMEN, takes place during the Civil War. I bought it immediately b/c the current WIP takes place during the Civil War.
One thing I know that never gets old. Discovering the one book that blows your socks off. My most recent was BETTY by Tiffany McDaniel – I read it last year and nothing I’ve read since has taken hold of me like that one.
I told someone once that when I finish a book sometimes I go and read a bunch of reviews, and it’s like my own private version of book club. They told me that was the nerdiest thing they had ever heard, and I guess it is. But at least you don’t have to deal with reviewers if they disagree with you.
I told someone once that when I finish a book sometimes I go and read a bunch of reviews, and it’s like my own private version of book club. They told me that was the nerdiest thing they had ever heard, and I guess it is. But at least you don’t have to deal with reviewers if they disagree with you.