CharChar84 wrote:I voted "In Store", but I don't usually purchase in stores such as B&N, etc. I purchase most of my books at thrift "stores" and library sales (They have these every Spring and Fall)! The last day of the library sale in my area, is $1/bag day, so I usually end up bringing home 200-1000 books depending on the selections and materials. I am an avid reader and can read anywhere from 2-6 books a week, so I try to keep a well stocked in-home library. Currently, I believe we have 1,500 books between my husband and I. We just did a purge and donated around 1,000 books at the beginning of the year.

I also utilize my local library as well. It's the best way for me to get my hands on the new releases without paying big bucks for them at the big box stores. I will say this, even though I rarely get to go there and when I do, I rarely buy anything...Barnes and Noble is one of my most favorite places to be!

Wow, awesome, thanks for sharing! You take buying in bulk to the ultimate level ! Do you often re-read books you have amassed in your home library? Yeah, I almost always go to my local library for that exact reason, to save money. B&N is a great place to visit...just to be surrounded by so many great reads makes for an enjoyable few hours! Have you gotten involved in the digital reading movement with ereaders/ebooks at all? I know that they offer many benefits but I haven't yet looked too deeply into them.

My best ways to get books (in my opinion) are :
- Purchasing books online stores
- Local bookstores w/ only new books
- Used book stores
- Library book sales

even though used book stores do have their charm and overall roaming around in a shop filled with old books is a blast, I still cannot find all the books from my reading list there.
Finding books from online stores is not as fun, but I can find and get every single book that I desperately need at least when I am ready to stump up the cash.
I also like library book sales. This is mainly because I live nearby an academic library which has nearly all of the categories that I love to read about. When entering the book sales you never know what treasures you might wander upon.
Although I like library book sales I hate borrowing/renting books. I love to own the books and add them to my growing personal non-fiction library.

This is an interesting question. Given all the books out there, how do you know what to read? Or to rephrase that, how do you avoid the bad or mediocre books that just waste your time? Well that is what I am going to try to answer. Though I think we need a more fitting set first.

So I've gotten a lot of questions on this particular subject in the past, but I'm just gonna go ahead and read the most recent one for you. I desperately need a video about how to efficiently develop a reading list that saves you from stumbling upon bad books, which may put you off a whole genre. I'd also like to know how to read more books in more diverse categories and how to avoid abandoning the older items on my list for a random book that I just heard of.

Now I do want to be a bit careful with this topic, because when I think back to some of the best books I've ever read, they've been things that I've just randomly picked off the library shelf or was given to by a friend, and I don't want you to avoid those serendipitous occasions. But given the absolute tirade of content that comes out of the publishing houses of the world and the internet, in the interest of helping you triage all the options out there, I want to give you some recommendations for how to find the best books in a particular genre, and avoid wasting your times on the bad ones or the mediocre ones, or the ones that are just kind of padded out for sales value if nothing else.

And the first thing I'm gonna talk about is one of my favorite websites in the world, which is GoodReads.com. I've been on Good Reads for quite a long time, and I found many of my favorite books in Good Reads recommendation lists which I would highly recommend checking out.

For instance, one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time, Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything", was right near the top of one of Good Read's best nonfiction of all time lists, and that's actually where I found it. And GoodReads is useful for other things
besides just its list feature.

If you do see a book on a shelf at Barnes and Noble or some bookstore or a library and you're not sure whether or not to read it, the reviews on GoodReads can be highly detailed and can be very good ways to triage the books you have on your list to figure out what you should prioritize, and a lot of authors actually have very active Good Reads profiles.

In fact, Pat Rothfuss, who wrote "The Name of the Wind", which is one of my top five fiction novels of all time has an incredibly long review history, which I have perused many times in the past, and one day when I was just casually scrolling through it, I saw that he had written a five star review for a fiction book, called "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland "in a Ship of Her Own Making", so I picked this up, read it, and even though it's kind of a YA novel, I found it to be a really good read.

So in short, GoodReads gives you an extensive database of lists of all different types of genres. I mean I've found cyber punk novels on their lists. I've found hacker history and crime history stuff on their lists, and even save money books so whatever it is, you can probably find a list about it.

It also has a huge user base so there's lots of reviews for most books out there, and you can use the review histories of lots of your favorite authors who are active on the platform to find new books that they liked and which you may like as well.

Now another great way to figure out whether or not a book is worth your time is to read a summary of it, and there are actually several resources on the internet that you can go to to find lots and lots of book summaries.

Thank you for reading please give me credit for this answer and visit my site/

This is an interesting question. Given all the books out there, how do you know what to read? Or to rephrase that, how do you avoid the bad or mediocre books that just waste your time? Well that is what I am going to try to answer. Though I think we need a more fitting set first.

So I've gotten a lot of questions on this particular subject in the past, but I'm just gonna go ahead and read the most recent one for you. I desperately need a video about how to efficiently develop a reading list that saves you from stumbling upon bad books, which may put you off a whole genre. I'd also like to know how to read more books in more diverse categories and how to avoid abandoning the older items on my list for a random book that I just heard of.

Now I do want to be a bit careful with this topic, because when I think back to some of the best books I've ever read, they've been things that I've just randomly picked off the library shelf or was given to by a friend, and I don't want you to avoid those serendipitous occasions. But given the absolute tirade of content that comes out of the publishing houses of the world and the internet, in the interest of helping you triage all the options out there, I want to give you some recommendations for how to find the best books in a particular genre, and avoid wasting your times on the bad ones or the mediocre ones, or the ones that are just kind of padded out for sales value if nothing else.

And the first thing I'm gonna talk about is one of my favorite websites in the world, which is GoodReads.com. I've been on Good Reads for quite a long time, and I found many of my favorite books in Good Reads recommendation lists which I would highly recommend checking out.

For instance, one of my favorite nonfiction books of all time, Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything", was right near the top of one of Good Read's best nonfiction of all time lists, and that's actually where I found it. And GoodReads is useful for other things
besides just its list feature.

If you do see a book on a shelf at Barnes and Noble or some bookstore or a library and you're not sure whether or not to read it, the reviews on GoodReads can be highly detailed and can be very good ways to triage the books you have on your list to figure out what you should prioritize, and a lot of authors actually have very active Good Reads profiles.

In fact, Pat Rothfuss, who wrote "The Name of the Wind", which is one of my top five fiction novels of all time has an incredibly long review history, which I have perused many times in the past, and one day when I was just casually scrolling through it, I saw that he had written a five star review for a fiction book, called "The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland "in a Ship of Her Own Making", so I picked this up, read it, and even though it's kind of a YA novel, I found it to be a really good read.

So in short, GoodReads gives you an extensive database of lists of all different types of genres. I mean I've found cyber punk novels on their lists. I've found hacker history and crime history stuff on their lists, and even save money books so whatever it is, you can probably find a list about it.

It also has a huge user base so there's lots of reviews for most books out there, and you can use the review histories of lots of your favorite authors who are active on the platform to find new books that they liked and which you may like as well.

Now another great way to figure out whether or not a book is worth your time is to read a summary of it, and there are actually several resources on the internet that you can go to to find lots and lots of book summaries.