Finding your next book to read

I know you’ve been there, too … finishing up a great book, setting it down in satisfaction, only to realize – you have no other worthwhile books on your pile. Horrors! Thanks to Boomer readers, we have some suggestions to help in finding your next book to read.

Most of us bibliophiles have strategies for avoiding such a heart-wrenching situation. I save recommendations from well-known personalities whom I respect. I keep several ongoing lists of books I want to read: Amazon wish lists (86 books), Evernote memo (23), and Goodreads “Want to Read” (42).

In reality, though, I rarely refer to these lists. Instead, I’ll learn about a book I want to read, promptly purchase or reserve it at the library, then set it on my bedside table. There it sits, awaiting its turn. And occasionally gathering dust, if more interesting books come to my attention in the meantime, or if it doesn’t appeal to me as much as it did when I first learned of it. And yes, occasionally the pile gets so tall that it could potentially come crashing down, which of course would happen in the middle of the night.

Last week, I received a notification from Goodreads that an author I follow had a new fiction book. Feeling the need for a bit of escapism from the two non-fiction books I’m currently reading, I ordered it and dove in immediately. (So much for eight hours of sleep for the next week or so!) I’ll get back to the others soon. Unless something else comes along.

Too many books. So little time!

Finding your next great book

Despite my lists (or forgetting my lists), I occasionally go on the hunt for my next read. Google doesn’t typically come through for me, but friends and family often do.

Earlier this week, a Boomer Facebook question got 91 comments to the question, “What book are you currently reading?” I don’t personally know many who responded, whether we have common interests and value systems, but I noted some interesting answers and added books to add to my lists. Responses included fiction and nonfiction, memoirs and biographies, historical and political, self-help, classics and new releases, and more. Maybe you’ll find some new books here, too!

“The list”

Finding your next book to read: Fiction

• The Bone Code by Kathy Reichs (2 responses, one “Excellent!!!” comment)
• The Miracle
• The Power of the Dog
• 1984 by George Orwell
• The Fix by David Baldacci
• The Invisible Half
• Hideaway
• Newcomer by Mary Kay Andrews
• Whiteout by Ken Follett
• The Desolations of Devils Acre by Ransom Riggs
• Black Echo by Michael Connolly, Harry Bosch series
• Who Is Maud Dixon?
• Golden Girl by Elin Hilderbrand (with the comment, “Not loving it so far”)
• The Ickabog by J.K. Rowling
• Bookshop by the Sea
• Patricia Cornwell’s books
• Atlas Shrugged
• The Dove Keepers
• Circe
• The Midnight Library (2 responses)
• The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
• The Book of Love
• The Personal Librarian
• The Rock Hole by Reavis Z. Wortham
• James Patterson is my go-to summer author. Easy reads for the pool
• Sooley, the latest John Grisham (2 responses)
• The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel (2 responses)
• The Book of Lost Names
• The French Paradox by Ellen Crosby (comment: “her newest book, and it’s great!”)
• Chrystallia and the Source of Light by Paul Michael Glaser
• With Teeth
• Detransition, Baby
• Klara and the Sun
• Eternal by Lisa Scottoline
• The Boy by Tami Hoag
• The Guise of Another by Allen Eskens
• The Coast-to-Coast Murders by James Patterson and J. D. Barker
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett (historical fiction)

Finding your next book to read: Non-fiction

• Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama
• My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg
• Ulysses S. Grant by Ron Chernow
• The Tale of the Devil: The Biography of Devil Anse Hatfield
• High on Arrival: A Memoir by Mackenzie Philips
• Ian Kershaw’s biography of Adolf Hitler, volume 2
• Merle Haggard biography
• A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell
• First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents – the stories of presidents and their best friends while in office
• The Organ Thieves by Chip Jones (reviewed in Boomer)
• The Life of George Washington by John Marshall (five-volume set)
• The Things Our Father Saw – D-Day and Beyond by Mathew Rozell
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
• Wilmington’s Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy
• The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan by Rick Perlstein
• A People’s History of the United States
• Grant, and The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
• The Barbizon: The Hotel That Set Women Free by Paulina Bren (2 responses)
• Writings of the Islands of Sullivan’s Island and Isle of Palms by Suzannah Smith Miles
• The Bible (several responses)
• The Fran Lebowitz Reader
• Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan
• Irreconcilable Founders: Spencer Roane, John Marshall, and the Nature of America’s Constitutional Republic by David Johnson
• The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song by Dr. Louis Henry Gates
• The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America by Adam Serwer
• The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment by Thom Hartmann
• Living Sober
• What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry
• A Course Called America: Fifty States, Five Thousand Fairways, and the Search for the Great American Golf Course by Tom Coyne

Now more true than ever … Too many books. So little time!