Bookish reading resources

Below is my personal curated list of all of the resources that I check to learn about books that I might like to read. A major tip that I have is to let yourself fall down the internet rabbit hole. If you find a recommendation source that you like, keep looking. See who they follow on instagram, or what other bloggers they like to mention. Something that I would recommend while you are checking out these resources is to have your TBR ready to be added to. You can check out ratings and other reviews on Goodreads if you’re nervous about picking up any random book.

IndieNext https://www.indiebound.org/indie-next-list

Each month IndieNext makes a post of books that have come out in the recent month that Indie booksellers are loving. When I first started following them, I thought it meant that the books were from Indie presses but that isn’t necessarily the case. Rid yourself of that misconception, stat! They sometimes post books that are worldwide best sellers from non-debut authors, which isn’t always my favorite, but people love what they love. It is fun to go trolling through their backlist selections to find something you can immediately get at the library.

LibraryReads http://libraryreads.org/

Similar to IndieNext, but instead of Indie booksellers it’s librarians. Pretty much all of the above applies, but you can enjoy the added bonus of a read-alike for every pick. I like to search their previous books for something I know I’ve already enjoyed, and then go find the read-alike to see if I agree.

Magazines / Newspapers / digital and print media

There are a number of these that I like to troll through. The more remote, or less focused on ‘literature’ that these are, the more that I like them. . Here is a sampling:

NYT https://www.nytimes.com/section/books

Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/

Bustle https://www.bustle.com/books

Elle https://www.elle.com/culture/books/

TheSkimm https://www.theskimm.com/reads

Celebrities / Influencers (but the good kind!)

Grace Atwood and Rebecca Freeman from Bad on Paper podcast have a facebook group that always has someone posting about a book. They tend to focus on recently published books and can point me toward a good YA hit.

https://badonpaperpodcast.com/book-club

Ashley Spivey of Spivey’s Book Club fame. She created a second account to specifically post about books (@spiveysbookclub) but I honestly preferred it when it was a big mish-mosh of things, like Grace and Becca do. Ashley is always going to cool book-ish events and is the best at letting me know when an author I loved is writing another book.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/292075681296111/

https://www.instagram.com/spiveysbookclub/?hl=en

A number of celebrities have their own book clubs. Celebrity book clubs are a hit-or-miss with me generally, but I like to keep track of what they’re reading to see if it’s something I am interested in.

Examples are: Jenna Bush https://www.today.com/read-with-jenna

Oprah http://www.oprah.com/app/books.html

Reese Witherspoon https://hello-sunshine.com/book-club/

and (surprisingly) Andrew Luck http://andrewluckbookclub.com/

Book-focused websites and bloggers and book podcasts and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Lithub https://lithub.com/, BookRiot https://bookriot.com/, the list goes on. Here is the full list of book blogs and book websites that I semi-regularly check for book-ish content.

Sarah’s Bookshelves — Sarah has a blog and a podcast AND we share the same name! I like to think that’s a bit of book-ish serendipity. (Get it, serendipity kind of has ‘Sarah’ in it? No?) I am a big of fan of the ‘backlist’ books that her podcast guests pick because I usually have never heard of them and they’re easy to get at the library. https://www.sarahsbookshelves.com/

Modern Mrs. Darcy / What Should I Read Next / One Great Book – Anne Bogel has got it going on. Listening to the podcasts let me broaden my reading experience. Something I especially love about the WSIRN podcast is the posts that they make on instagram when someone is looking for a particular kind of book. The comments on the podcast episode blog posts are great, too. https://modernmrsdarcy.com/

Currently Reading – Meredith and Kaytee make being a huge reader seem normal. And they make being a sometimes reader seem normal. And they make anything you could have ever thought about books seem normal. They are down to earth and funny. I became a patron of their podcast (Patreon) and the massive list of every book they’ve ever pressed is something I am doing my best to slowly work through. All of their recommendations are on point. https://www.currentlyreadingpodcast.com/