Random Friday Question: How Do You Discover Great New Books?
Today's Random Friday Question: How do you learn about a great new book? Are the book reviews that have been a mainstay of great American newspapers a dying breed? Is it even possible to talk about them as a breed when so few remain?
When my book on radio and how old media adapt in an era of new technologies was published earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to receive about 25 reviews in newspapers and magazines across the country. But the book review landscape has changed dramatically, and not for the better, over the past decade. A decade ago, when I published a book on the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was reviewed in more newspapers, and--more important--by more and different reviewers. This time around, while there hasn't been much of a difference in the number of publications that reviewed the book, two major trends in the book and newspaper businesses came clear:
1) Newspapers are very eager to cut costs, and book reviews are often among the first things to go. Fewer newspapers have book sections, and those that still publish reviews often pick up reviews already commissioned and paid for by other newspapers. For example, the papers in Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh and Little Rock all published the same review of my book. A decade ago, no two papers used the same review of my book. Put aside the author's ego--writers can just shut up: one nice review published four times isn't so different from four different reviews--but it has a clear and unfortunate impact on the variety of voices heard across the country. A book that runs against the grain socially or politically is far less likely to win a sympathetic or challenging hearing if it's reviewed a handful of times than if it is widely reviewed by all manner of writers.
2) For all the whining that people in the book business are doing about the loss of book reviews in the nation's press, the publishing industry isn't exactly doing much to support those book reviews. Check out the remaining book pages in the nation's big papers, and most Sundays, you'll be hard-pressed to find more than one or two token ads for books. As I look back on the book pages of a decade ago, there was considerably more book advertising in those papers. You can argue chicken and egg all day, but the bottom line is that the publishers don't back up their complaints with the advertising that might encourage newspaper bean-counters to stick with book reviews.
Even as newspapers drop their book review sections, an unfortunate tiff has broken out between newspaper book critics and bloggers who write about books. Such sniping will be familiar to any web-savvy folks who have watched as guardians of the Old Media have grumbled our way into the New Era while bloggers often pretend to be something completely new and different, when in fact they are something less, but something nonetheless important: a fascinating and still-evolving twist on the active and involved readers of the past. At bottom, such squabbles amount to little, and already the outlines of an accommodation and a hybrid of traditional book reviews and newfangled book blogs is easily foreseen.
What's happening in the world of letters is not elementally different from the changes occurring in so many other areas of media. Here's a newspaper movie critic's lament as he watches all too many American newspapers starting to eliminate their film critics--a development that threatens to compound the predictability and homogeneity of Hollywood's product. In the world of music, the methods for discovering new sounds are changing rapidly. Radio allowed the digital revolution to change how many Americans listen to and find out about new music. Radio's emphasis on market research and chasing after ever-narrower demographic niches led programmers away from the individuality and creativity that formerly made AM and FM places to hear knowledgeable deejays taking listeners into their own excitement over new discoveries.
Similarly, the number of writers who can manage to cobble together even part-time gigs as book reviewers has dropped like a stone.
What's replacing those pathways to discovery? Again, the music and letters worlds are parallel. Three words: Amazon-like suggestion engines. The algorithms behind Amazon.com's book and music recommendation engines have spawned a series of innovative music sites that catalogue what you already like and select music that might therefore send you. Pandora.com, Lastfm.com, and the Hype Machine are good examples.
The book world isn't quite there yet. Amazon remains the granddaddy of book recommending machines, but its picks tend to be very predictable and its reviews are anything but dependable, the same kind of hodgepodge you find on most random comment boards. At allreaders.com, you can find a book--mostly novels--by plugging in the setting (prairie, forest, small town, Europe), style, main character or adversary you like in a story, and the engine coughs up some possibilities, with reviews of those books. Whichbook, a British site that also lets you borrow the books you choose, is somewhat snazzier: It lets you search for recommendations by plotting points on a continuum such as "sex....no sex," "beautiful.....disgusting," or "larger than life....down to earth." When I asked the machine to offer me a book that was funny, disturbing, unpredictable and violent, it came up with "Driving Big Davie" by Colin Bateman, the tale of two men from Ulster on a romp through Florida.
Blogs are starting to play more of a role in suggesting both music and books. You could argue that the quality control is, ahem, lacking, but then, you could say that about your local newspaper's reviewers too--unless that paper has a robust review with a staff of editors whose knowledge covers many fields and whose stable of reviewers includes interesting minds from many walks of life. At librarything.com, the somewhat clunky BookSuggester works off your entry of books you already like, using Amazon and Library of Congress listings to gin up titles. (And so does the somewhat more fun Unsuggester, which tells you which books are least often held in the libraries of people who own the book you type in.)
But I don't see in any of these engines the combination of serendipity and added value that a compellingly written and creative book review provides. So: Aside from good old word of mouth recommendations from trusted friends, how do you discover good new books?
By Marc Fisher |
May 25, 2007; 7:20 AM ET
Previous: Virginians and Gays: Beyond the '06 Vote |
Next: The News from Loudoun Goes Silent
Posted by: SoMD | May 25, 2007 7:32 AM
I like some of the online review sites. AVClub and metacritic are where I usually poke around.
Posted by: Jerry | May 25, 2007 8:30 AM
Powells has staff recommendations, daily customer recommendations, and much more useful customer reviews. All way useful.
Plus used bookstores are always a good place to find new (to you) authors.
I've rarely read newspaper book reviews anyway, because they almost never cover books that seem interesting to me.
Posted by: forget amazon | May 25, 2007 9:06 AM
I think blogs are doing a good job of filling in for the book reviews. If you follow a handful of blogs about subjects your interested in, chances are a new book related to those subjects will eventually get mentioned. This will at least keep you up to date on books in the subject areas you are already interested in. I guess the drawback to this is that you will not be exposed to books that you would otherwise not seek out, which is one of the advantages of book reviews.
Posted by: Charlie | May 25, 2007 9:34 AM
I subscribe to the NY Review of Books, The TLS ands the London Review of Books. If you can't afford to subscribe, thry should be available in a decent library. By the way, I've found their web sites mainly unsatisfactory.
Posted by: Lex Park | May 25, 2007 9:50 AM
Whaaaaaannnn!!!!!
Listen to the poor newspaper writer lament the fall of his industry. At least Marc has enough sense of irony to write about it on the web and not in the dead tree edition.
I'll keep doing the same thing I've always done - ask the staff at independent bookstores. You're helping the little guy out and will probably find new stuff you need even thought of. At least, I'll keep doing that until independent bookstores go the way of the independent record store because we no longer read physical copies of books. Might not happen in the next 5-10 years, but it will happen.
Posted by: Shawn | May 25, 2007 10:04 AM
Mostly just keeping an eye out. I periodically check out Arts & Letters Daily (http://www.aldaily.com/) and get some good tips. Slate (http://www.slate.com) has an interesting book review blog, The Book Club, in which two reviewers have back-and-forth exchanges discussing their different perspectives on a book; Slate also does short reviews of books, movies, and music in their Summary Judgment column. I tend to ignore Amazon's "recommendations" for me and instead click through the links to other items viewed or purchased by customers who looked at a book that I like. The first link or two is usually fairly predictable, but continuing to surf through layers of those links can take you to some interesting places.
And I'll frequently browse at used and new bookstores, write down authors and titles that look interesting, and follow up at the library. While at the library, sometimes I'll just pick a random aisle and choose three books that look interesting. That technique nets me a fair bit of dreck that I put down after 50 pages, but I've also discovered some wonderful authors that way.
Posted by: Northern Girl | May 25, 2007 11:13 AM
I also subscribe to NYT TLS. Since I like mysteries I do posioned Pen press newsletter,Stop it you're killing me.com and mystery book store in Charm city(forgot cute name) e-mail newsletter. I notice that the Post's Sunday Book review has diminished in size and scope.
Posted by: Tom | May 25, 2007 11:45 AM
My favorite source of new books of interest used to be C-SPAN's Booknotes program, which is now, lamentably gone. But C-SPAN2 still has BookTV on weekends.
But C-SPAN, as you would expect, is a source of books about politics, history, and public affairs. I know of no reliable source for the good word on books of fiction.
Posted by: Rocco | May 25, 2007 11:51 AM
I find good books by talking to friends and co-workers. There are two people right now whose suggestions send me running to the book store. I call them my personal shoppers.
A now-defunct publication that I absolutely adored was "A Common Reader". I still have some back copies and look occasionally to see what else I could read.
I do try to read the NYT book review when I can get my hands on it, and I find good books that way as well.
I keep a running list on my pda of books I want to read and recommendations just in case I find myself in a bookstore.
Sigh. So many books, so little time . . .
Posted by: WorkingMomX | May 25, 2007 1:06 PM
I work at a library so I have the advantage of seeing what's new. That's where I found Marc's radio book which is an interesting read. Most library web sites are good.
Posted by: Tracy | May 29, 2007 10:14 AM
I work at a library so I have the advantage of seeing what's new. That's where I found Marc's radio book which is an interesting read. Most library web sites are good.
Posted by: Tracy | May 29, 2007 10:14 AM
As dailies decrease their arts coverage, let me put in a good word for what are still called "alternative weeklies"
I wrote as a freelancer for the Baltimore City Paper for over a dozen years and that publication's coverage of film, books and music is strong, if of course idiosyncratic and with few bars to rough language. On the other hand, the Baltimore Sun just gets worse and worse. Two feeble pages on books in the Sunday issue and nothing during the week, plus increasing reliance on other Tribune papers for various forms of arts coverage. (Although, to its credit, the Sun still has two movie critics on staff.)
The problem with relying on blogs and web sites for arts criticism is that, in many cases, I have no idea who the hell the people are who are writing. When, for example, I read a review by Jon Yardley in the Post, I become interested (or uninterested) in a book because I know his tastes dovetail with mine and that he won a Pulitzer for criticism. He's got credentials. What credentials do all the bloggers have? Often, what they have are simply enthusiasms and prejudices, which ain't gonna convince me to spend $25 or $30 on a book.
Posted by: Jack | May 29, 2007 10:22 AM
Dirda.
Posted by: Anonymous | May 30, 2007 11:03 AM
I read the Post Book Review. And I'm likely to buy a book by an author if I've enjoyed a short story by him or her in the New Yorker. Earth-shattering, I know.
If the Post ever cuts its book coverage, I'm'a beat someone up down there.
Posted by: Lindemann | June 1, 2007 11:23 AM
Hello! Good Site! Thanks you! fbwrqidruvkmh
Posted by: woakohzyfl | June 18, 2007 11:24 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
Using a book review or the word-of-mouth method will only give you somebody else's opinion of a book.
Try going to a bookstore and looking at the new releases. Doing it yourself is the only way to know if you will like a book.
Unless you are the lead dog your view of the world will always be the same.