Archive for Choosing Books

Admittedly, when I go to a bookstore, I always go to a specific section. Most of the time, I don’t venture to the other sections of the store because I either am not interested at that time or I don’t have enough time. But there were times when venturing into other sections has led me to discover new books I never thought I would read.

Here are some suggestions for the particular reader:

1. For Fiction Readers - Try the Non-Fiction department. There are biographies of real people whose stories are more interesting than fiction stories.

2. For Travel Enthusiasts - Try the Cookbook section. Sometimes you get to know a place more through the food the local people eat.

3. For The History Buff - Try the Historical Fiction Section. It offers you a new twist to history through the eyes of an imaginative mind.

4. For the Art Lover - Try the graphic novel section. Analyzing the artwork of a graphic novel can be very satisfying for the art lover.

5. For the Classic Literature Lover - Try the Fiction department. It’s a good idea sometimes to fuse classic and modern literature and learn from them together.

Next time you go to a bookstore, don’t be afraid to venture into another area. It’s a good way to get out of your comfort zone. And it helps you to learn something new everyday. It’s quite easy: just cross the line between the departments and go from there. You don’t have to get anything at first, but you should try and browse through the books. It doesn’t hurt to get an idea first. So, cross that line next time.

For every person that loves books there are twice as many people who hate reading them. There are a number of outlying reasons people hate to read, but probably the biggest is that they only read when they are forced to. This especially holds true with children. Children who love to read will pick up anything from books, magazines, letters, even to product labels here and there. The children who don’t particularly like reading, however, will not pick up anything to read unless they are forced or coaxed into doing so. This means that people (who hate reading) grow up their whole lives practically forced and being told what exactly they should read. This causes problems everywhere, because these types of people learn to hate reading simply for one very obtrusive reason. Parents, teachers, and even bosses at work shove required reading contents down the ladder, and often the subject matter isn’t very interesting to those having to read it.

For those who hate reading, it’s hard to understand the blissful zen of submerging into material that one is incredibly interested in. Reading is amazing and can open up new worlds and in many cases a new life, but only when it is something interesting to the reader. That means the material needs to be chosen by the reader, not by others. If you are one of those people always being forced to read content assigned by others, then you need to find some reading time for yourself. Yes, unfortunately, you will still have to balance out time to read the required material, but so does everyone else around you. Pick a relaxing spot to chill out and read, and then find material that completely interests you. It can be anything from magazines to novels to children’s books and even letters or brochures. Whatever you are interested in, that is what the material must pertain to.

I say to all those out there who don’t enjoy reading, at some time you must embrace the fact that reading takes a large part in everyone’s life; it’s about time you got a little more involved.

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we like to let go of the award-winning, critically-acclaimed books, books that tug at your heart and force you into action. Sometimes it gets too much. And those are the times when we turn to the book that will make us laugh and giggle and make our hearts warm and help us escape even for awhile. These are the chick lit books.

I admit I have a weakness for chick lit. I love the tried-and-tested romantic angle, where girl meets boy, boy gives her a hard time, girl eventually falls in love with him, they kiss and the love story is complete. Or the angle where the girl gives up everything, goes somewhere alone and re-discovers herself. It’s not original, but it works because it gives “chicks” hope.

There are some chick lit books, though, where the formula becomes tiring, and it doesn’t work. It just fails throughout. But there are a lot of chick lit books that have succeeded everytime. If you’d like to read a chick lit, I suggest reading books from these authors:

1. Jane Green

She has tried to evolve and expanded her books to include other woman issues, including aging, fertility and the like. She knows she is writing chick lit, so she doesn’t try to be intellectual in any of her books, which works better anyway.

Notable Jane Green Books: Jemima J, Second Chance, The Other Woman, Swapping Lives

2. Marian Keyes

Marian Keyes and Jane Green are two of the authors leading the pack when it comes to chick lit. They invented what chick lit is all about. Marian Keyes, however, at first decided to concentrate on one family with five sisters and decided to create stories about three of the sisters. She later evolved to writing stories about different females that reflected the issues women are going through today.

Notable Marian Keyes Books: Rachel’s Holiday, Angels

3. Jane Austen

The ultimate female author who unofficially started the trend for chick lit. Even though her books were set in the 19th century, a lot of the issues back then are still the issues women are going through today. She has served as the inspiration of chick lit authors worldwide because she captures the emotions and the trials of a woman accurately all the time.

Notable Jane Austen Books: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion

Do you like reading chick lit? What’s your favorite chick lit book?

Do you experience certain days when you want to read a book that exactly fit the mood you had in that exact moment? I know I have. I only read certain books with certain emotions. Otherwise, I will have a hard time grasping the whole story. I have to be in the right frame of mind before I tackle any book.

Rainy Days
On rainy days, I really don’t want to be thinking too much. The weather’s down, and all I want to do is just relax. On these days, I mostly choose to read love stories. They can range from chick lit to young adult novels to unconventional love stories. One of my favorite books about love is Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It’s about a man who, because of some gene in his body is able to time travel to different periods of time, but only between the years he was alive on Earth. On one of his time travels, he meets his future wife. He was 27 that time, she was 6. This is a love story between two people perfect for each other that literally withstood time. It’s not the conventional love story we are all familiar with, but it will still tug at your heart.

Philosophical Moments
Franz Kafka’s The Castle is the perfect book when you want to work your brain and bring it to overtime. Because with The Castle, just when you think you’ve figured everything out, Kafka twists it again and forces you to think some more. You may get a headache when reading this book because of too much thinking, but you will learn a lot from The Castle. You will learn to observe and to question. You will learn to analyze and criticize. It’s not a very complicated story, it’s about a man searching for The Castle. But the things he learns while on his journey complicates the story. If you’re ready to read this journey, then I suggest you start this at the start of the day.

Scandalous
Do you want to expect the unexpected when reading a book? Try The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. It’s a story about a young woman who is searching for her father and finding the connection between him and Dracula. It’s scary and chilling. My only advice: Don’t read this alone at night.

What about you? What are the books you like to read on certain days? What kind of days are those?

How do you choose which books to read? Do you depend on the recommendations of your family or friends? Do you choose based on instinct? Do you do lots of research before finally choosing what book to read?

Usually, I choose books to read through three ways:

1. Recommendations by family, friends or book reviews (which includes critics, bloggers and journalists)

I ask around a lot and try to find out from my family and friends the books they’ve read and what they liked, loved and hated. From that information, I can decide whether a book is up to my liking. There are hits and misses, of course. But thankfully, there are more hits than misses.

I also consult best-seller lists. I try to study the top books in the list and determine whether I’d be interested in reading them. Or I read book review articles or blogs to find out the good books worth reading.

2. Instinct

I like going to bookstores and just browsing the books in the store. I usually go to the new releases first and grab the first one that catches my eye. Then I go to different departments and go through the same motions. This is a little dangerous since it follows some impulsive shopping, but I’ve made some good discoveries with this method.

3. Familiarity

I am always on the look out for new books from my favorite authors. Luckily, I have several authors on my watchlist, and they release at least one new book every year.

How do you choose the books you read? Do you have a certain method you use to choose a book? Which ones work more than others?