By Elaine Patterson, Newbridge Headquarters
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you want to read, but you don’t know what you want to read except that it’s not one of your favourites but something new? Finding new reading material can be daunting, especially with the overwhelming number of authors, both new and old at your perusal. So, where do you look for books and how do you choose them? When book browsing I like to keep notes of what books catch my interest so that I have a list to refer back to later. It’s a handy way to have a continuous stream of potential new reads. And for the finding of new literature-there are dozens of places to look.
The easiest way of ensuring a steady supply of new reading material is simply to join a book club. Your local library will have one or more book clubs and you can also use Meetup or Facebook to find other book clubs in your local area and online. Another easy method is to ask your friends, family and local librarians what books they’ve read recently.
You could browse your local library and bookshop or bookstore. It’s also a good idea to use the library catalogue to browse for books and to check out your bookshop or bookstore’s website. Borrowbox is another excellent resource for browsing as you can search by bestsellers, genre, new releases, top downloads and more through the advanced search function. Attending literary festivals will also introduce you to new books and authors. In Ireland we are very fortunate to have many such festivals such as the Kildare Reader’s Festival and the Bantry Literary Festival and many more. Here is a post listing some of them.
You can also try browsing book blogs such as Kildare Libraries Blog, films on Netflix, in your local library and film shops or googling a list of films adapted from books as some films are based on or adapted from books. Detailed. com & reedsy.com can also help give you an idea of the variety of book blogs available online. There are also book podcasts on platforms like Stitcher and booktubers on Youtube.   You can also look up literary prizes and awards long and short lists and the best books of a specific year. Or you can look up publishing houses’ websites such as Penguin Random House, Epic Reads,(part of HarperCollins Publishers) and Chicken House.Â
Did you know you can even log on to the Ireland Reads website and find a book recommendation?
Some of the many other online resources are:
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