How to Choose Your Next Read | Guest Post by Emily @enchntdrose

Greetings, weblings!  Thanks to Ali for letting me do a guest post – let’s get started!

So while I’ve got you all here reading in rapt attention, eyes glued to the screen in excitement to see what this new, mysterious person has to say, I want to take this opportunity to write a discussion post about a question that often plagues me: how do you decide what to read next?

My current method of choosing my next read looks a bit like this:

Whereas in my meanderings around the blogosphere, I notice that most book bloggers have these beautiful little things called “TBR”s that they use, typically on a monthly basis, to plan out their reads. I have a TBR. It’s my Goodreads “to-read” list, and it currently has 358 books on it.

I typically don’t decide what I want to read next until I am just about to finish the book I am currently reading. My feelings and whims change day-by-day, so I have this awful fear of committing to a monthly TBR that I won’t actually want to read once I get farther into the month. I never know what I want to read a month in advance, and I don’t want to force myself to read something that one-month-ago Emily wanted to read on the day I made that list. One-month-ago Emily is not to be trusted. I enjoy reading whatever strikes my fancy after I finish a book. If I just read a YA sci-fi romance, I might want to pick up a piece of contemporary literary fiction to mix it up. Or may be a graphic novel! Who knows!?

Here is what I assume is a list of factors that help in making TBR’s:

1. Availability

Did you just buy a new book and want to read it right away, or are you like me and buy books way faster than you can read them until you have an apartment full of unread books and wind up having to sift through them like a crazy pink unicorn?

2. Series

Did you start a series you want to finish all in one go, or are you like me and get distracted by a different book after finishing the first in a series and let it go for months (and sometimes even forever) before finally returning to that series?

3. Themes/Challenges

You might be participating in a theme or a challenge that is guiding what you read. Or, you might be like me and fear that kind of commitment.

I’m starting to see a pattern here. I am just too whimsical of a person to have a true set TBR aside from my ever-growing list of books I want to read before I die. So, I ask you, good people of the blogosphere:

How do you decide what to read next?

Meet the Blogger

My name is Emily and I blog over at Rose Read. A little about me: I am just finishing up my 2nd year teaching high school English in the Midwestern United States, but I am going back to school soon to study library science. My favorite genres are literary fiction, YA, fantasy, science fiction, graphic novels, and the occasional non-fiction/memoir. My current read is “The Little Paris Bookshop” by Nina George. Other than books and blogging, I love musical theater, hiking, dark chocolate, Mumford & Sons, owls, and unicorns.

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