How do you decide what to read next???

When you have a rather large (okay, huge) TBR pile, how do you decide which book you'll read next? Do you read the first few pages of different books to see what grabs you? Do you base your choice on recommendations and reviews? Do you close your eyes and grab one? ;)

Just curious how others choose their next book. I have so many options on my TBR shelves and it's always so hard to choose the next one! :)

I never look inside the book; that's what I did when I put it on the shelf (my TBR shelf is but a small subset of the Great Unread, most of which I acquired when I acquired the library of my current husband along with the current husband).

I stare at the spines, then wonder what I'm in the mood for--maybe something in the same mood as the last book?-- then evaluate how heavy it will be to schlep to work, then tell myself to grab something, dammit!

If that book doesn't get started the same day (maybe I was too busy at work) I'm likely to choose an entirely different one the next day.

Oh, man, there are so many answers to that for me!

Sometimes I'm so excited about a shiny new book that I just got that I'll pick it up almost right away. Other times, I'll make a deliberate effort to pick up a book that's been on the TBR Pile for far too long. (This group is helping me do more of that, I think!)

I'll try to match books to my work/life schedule, too, which is highly variable. If I'm working night shifts, say, and they're pretty quiet, I'll read to pass the time. So when I'm on nights, I try to pick things that are interesting enough to keep me awake, but which aren't incredibly mentally challenging, since by the end of the shift my brain will be tired. On the other hand, if I'm on days and expecting to be pretty busy, I'll try to choose something light that I can pick up and put down without frustration. And if I'm expecting to have lots of uninterrupted reading time, of course, I'll pick something meatier. I have a whole (albeit somewhat fuzzy) set of criteria for what kind of books are best when.

I also try to avoid reading books that are too similar too close together. For instance, if I've just read a detective novel, or a book set in ancient Rome, or a biography, I won't read another one of those right away. I also like to mostly alternate fiction and non-fiction.

Early Reviewer books get priority, obviously. Books that were given to me as gifts also get bumped up in priority a bit, although it still usually takes me a while to get to them. Recommendations, reviews, or just having seen a book mentioned somewhere recently can also make me more likely to pick something up.

And, if all else fails, I just walk past the stacks and see what calls my name. There's almost always something. Usually there are many somethings. :)

Closing your eyes....? Yes, oh yes, I have tried that. But then I stick out my tongue if I consider it a bad pick and do it again, and again, and again until I get what I really want. :)

Having just read an Early Reviewer book, I really should read a TBR. But I've also got 17 books checked out from the library.... When it comes to library books, I usually read what's due next!

Okay, I'm going to try the "close your eyes trick" and see what happens. I'm actually in the middle of something else already at the moment, Russell T. Davies -Doctor Who:The Writer's Tale but it's 600+ pages of emails and in tiny font at that, so I could use another book to dip in and out of.....

And the winner is, without having stuck out my tongue, etc... The Mummy's Congress: Science, Obsession and the Everlasting Dead Cool. Right up my alley.

Hey, I've got The Writer's Tale on my TBR, too... But I keep putting that one off, mainly because it'd be kind of heavy to lug around. Which is yet another consideration.

The Mummy's Congress sounds really interesting.

Yeah, I'm half way through and breaking the bloody spine. Would have been better as a hardback, but I'm sure Amazon would have charged a fortune for it. Interesting read. Learning all about his writing process. He never actually sits down and writes until it's three weeks late. :) I was amazed to learn how much control he has over the other writer's scripts. Took a story away from Mark Gatiss after he'd worked on it for a year! One man's vision is right.

I like using a random number generator. I have all of my shelves numbered & listed in a small table. When it's time to choose a new book to read (which doesn't happen as often as I'd like--Group Reads or urgent recommendations tend to trump the TBR, which is why I'm doing such a miserable job over here), I go to the next shelf on my list. I count the books on that shelf, plug the numbers into a random number generator, and whichever number comes up, that's the book I read. Otherwise, some very good books remain unread, or I overwhelm myself trying to decide. This has worked well for me.
Another time, when I knew I'd be on medical leave for 6 weeks, I looked at the total number of books in my library, then asked my geeky son to choose 5 numbers between 1 and 750 (at the time). Whatever those numbers were, I read that book. If I had read it, I moved down to the next one. I read some really fun ones then!
Someone else had mentioned once that they go to their profile page, and look at "Random books from your library," then take the first one on that list that they haven't read.
Remember, these are suggestions from someone who is certifiably OCD. It may be too much for some, but I love how it works for me!

>6 hairballsrus:: I have the hardback, which is just huge. It looks rather nice, though. I forget how much I paid for it. I think I had a gift certificate. :)

>7 tloeffler:: I wouldn't want to do it to pick books to read next, but I've started using a random number generator to pick books off my wishlist to buy next. I haven't done it enough yet to tell how successful it'll be, though.

I go by instinct, I guess. Or by mood. I just try to avoid reading similar books too close together -- books with similar settings or themes -- otherwise I can forget what was in which book.

With the BOTS challenge, I also try to alternate between books I'm still anxious to read and those that have been on the shelves so long I can't remember when or why they got there. I don't want to have to end the challenge with only relatively unappealling choices left.

I often pick which library book to read first based on whether I'll be traveling out of town via airplane. If I'm flying, I'm picking a light book. If it's by car, weight/size isn't as much an issue. If I'm staying home, I'll read whichever is due first.

For BOTS, I have two specific stacks I'm trying to work through--most of which are non-fiction. I try to alternate a fiction or memoir between the business/self-help books. I also have a few in the stack that I have already started. Since I haven't been making much progress, I think I'll pick next the one that has the bookmark closest to the end of the book to give me a boost on the challenge.

Lately I have been trying to read books that fit my 1010 Challenge so I pull a few that will fit different categories and then I chose either by cover, or by whatever grabs my attention. With library books, I try to read them in order of due date. Sometimes, I am so undecided that I read the first paragraph of the books I have sitting out and then make my choice by which ever one seems most inviting.

Chosing my books has somewhat of a priority system to it. Since joining LT I have starting making a list of the books that I want to read at the beginning of the year and then weed through those as I go along.

1) Of course that list never includes the ERs or ARCs that I receive so (sometimes they start to pile up) occasionally I have to put those at the top of the list. April I am designating as ER/ARC month so that I can catch up. (I have 8 waiting to be read).
2) Interlibrary Loans that arrive haphazardly on their own time schedule but only allow me 3 weeks to read them come next.
3) Then some of the Challenges that I participate in take third place (President's Challenge I am reading in order so I need to finish X before moving on to Y).
4) Group reads are next in priority - since everyone else's schedule doesn't necessarily match up with mine, I need to match with them.
5) Last but by no means least, a book that I want to read that is due at the library has to have some place in the mix.

I wish it was as simple as just picking up a book and reading but since there are so many that I want to read, a priority system had to be established.
**The horrors of wanting to read too many books.**

I dust my book shelves and make sure all the books are in order. I usually wind up reading the book that is out of place. I just haven't figured out how the books get out of order.

Today my daughter and I spent a good part of a rainy afternoon in a newly discovered used book store and then drove around in circles looking for a sushi place I knew was in the area but I couldn't remember the name to put in the Garmin. (That would be too easy.) After we finally found it and we were sipping tea, she commented that she couldn't believe she just bought more books for her pile. (hehehe) I said it's very much like having a closet full of clean, ironed clothes and deciding what to wear that day according to what we had to do or felt like wearing or a combination of the two. Do I wear something light and cool or heavy and warm? Colorful or drab? Delicate or heavyduty? New or old and reliable? Usually a combination of mood and what I am doing that day drives my choice.

>7 tloeffler: I admire your organiztion skills! My TBR are piled up beside my bed in leaning stacks. I read by due date back to the library, and sometimes, like right now, I read several books at a time just to keep things interesting. I try to read the books that I am most excited about when I am excited about them, because if I don't get around to them for awhile then I tend to forget what it was that attracted me to them in the first place and its harder for me to start to read them. I am also stockpiling books I own for a time when I may not have such ready access to a library. Right now I am reading Olympos by Dan Simmons, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, and Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin and chomping at the bit to start The Passage by Justin Cronin that I just got from Early Reviewers. That last is sitting over on my shelf glittering and winking at me and I have been looking forward to it for such a long time that I feel the need to prolong my anticipation even further, and to also clear the deck of all of my other current reads.

Back in January, I "ordered" my TBR bookcases...all 3 of them. So, now they are grouped by Christian non-fiction, Christian fiction, memiors, true crime, non-fiction (which are sub-grouped), fiction (alpha by author) and classics. Now, when I'm ready to choose a new book, I sit down in front of my friends waiting to be met (with my cat) and have a chat with them. I ask my "friends" what group I should choose from. Whichever group calls out first wins my attention. Lately, I've been taking the first book from the group but sometimes I grab from the middle.

For me, deciding on the group to read from is the hardest part. Once over that hump, I grab and go. ;-)

I kind of go by feel or instinct. If I've recently finished a specific genre (I try to not read more than 1-2 books of a genre at a time) (I tend to have about 10 books going at a time), I will try to pick up a TBR book of that genre, unless I have a library book out of that genre. I'm also participating in Go Review That Book!, both to try to get me to read TBR books AND to review them.

Yes, as so many others have said, it's an instinctive thing. A book I would love in one kind of mood will do nothing for me in another. I've actually been trying to do things more of less alphabetically - get rid of all the As before moving on to the Bs etc but anyone who cares to take a look at my list so far will see how well that has worked for me! ER books demand my attention - I know I have to read those or I won't get any more (that's why I count them towards the challenge) but new books (which don't count) sometimes intrude. I'm now up to the halfway mark in the challenge so thought I deserved a couple of weeks of to catch up on some newer ones and then it'll be back to picking out random books from the shelf until one in particular 'calls' to me. I get fed up with a particular genre after a couple of books (at most) and also tend to swing from long to short/light to serious but even that's very vague and requires no real planning. I'm intrigued by how some people can plan ahead what they are going to read - every time I do that it all goes horribly wrong.

How interesting to see what others have said! I always read the publishing information at the beginning, then the first page. I used to be able to tell by then whether or not the book would be written in a style I'd enjoy. I rather used to have the Midras touch when it came to picking up random books off shelves, in fact - but I've picked up some stinkers recently by doing that, so now I often read reviews off here and Amazon first, since I've looked up other books I've read and more often than not found myself agreeing with what the reviewers have said.

#19 I get the feeling we're confusing whose 'shelf' it is. I would completely agree with you about how to pick a book in a shop but the ones for the 'Books Off the Shelf Challenge' are supposed to be books we've already bought and which are now languishing on our own shelves. That makes it harder in a way because they are all books we liked the look of enough to buy them in the first place - it just takes a while to remember that sometimes;-)

#20, oh yes, I see what you mean now! Ahh. Well, that counts me out of this discussion as the only three books still languishing on my shelves are the ones I can't bear to get rid of - Rebecca, Gone With the Wind & a volume of Keats' poetry. All the rest go to charity shops as I don't have endless shelf space; how I envy those who do! What about you?

A young friend of ours recently embarked on a journey where she will be gone for a year. We are storing her belongings and taking care of her dog while she is away. Her books are taking up space on my shelves so I decided I would begin reading some of her books as a kind of charge for storage and dog food and also because she had borrowed many of my books and not returned them and they seem to have disappeared from her collection and thus from mine as well. The first of her books I read was The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, lovely story. I just finished In the Woods by Tana French and was happy to find the second book by Tana French, The Likeness, at our local library, thus getting off track again. I try to do "off the shelf" but it is very difficult. Oftentimes books off the shelf just have to be followed up immediately by books found elsewhere.

#21 It's okay, you don't have to get rid of them! The idea of the challenge is that we read the books that have been hanging around unread for years. The ones we've read and enjoyed can stay as long as they want (there are around 2,000 of them on my shelves and those are just the ones I can't bear to part with - the ones I never wish to reread go to charity). Most of us have huge piles of books we've bought in a frenzy and still haven't got round to reading so the purpose of this is to get some of those out of the way - but not necessarily out of the house so you can rest easy that if you really like them you still get to keep them.

Loving this discussion! We are closing on our house this week (hopefully), and most of our stuff has been packed up as we just moved about 2 months ago, but as soon as we move in the next few weeks I'll get to unpack all of my books again and be able to participate in this challenge. As it is right now I've just been getting books from the library and occasional bookstore shopping. The latter is badness cause I really need to work on the books I have. ;)

Congratulations on the house, leperdbunny! I still remember the fun of touching all of my books when we moved into our home a bit over four years ago. Fun and a fair share of guilt/shame if I'm honest. It was a stark reminder of how many books I owned for YEARS and have never read. We'll look forward to seeing what book off your shelf you pick to read first.

I tend to pick the shortest books - I can read them quickly and thus get quick satisfaction from whittling the list down. But I don't buy books, generally speaking, so I also have a finite list that will eventually go away. Then it will just be wishlist books ...

>25 lbradf: Thanks lbradf!

That's a cool question. Usually if I buy a whole bunch of books at b&n I pick the ones that continue in a series so I don't leave myself hanging too long and then forgetting what happened before in the books.

Recently I've started putting "Oh, I really want to read that one" books on a shelf. Sorry to say, that's now two shelves. Some of the books I read are "have to's" for a writing project; the other ones are books that interest me, for whatever reason. I try to read a "have to" book and a "whatever I want to" book at the same time. The whatever I want book tends to be whatever grabs me on a particular day. I guess you can tell I've very right-brained. Heh.

It's the mood thing for me. I look at the stack and pick out the one that seems most interesting at that time; tomorrow, it might be something different.