For fiction books I simply browse bookshops, new and old and read a lot of blurbs. I'm fortunate in that there are all kinds of niche and speciality bookshops alongside the more mainstream chains around me so I can spend an afternoon perusing a few favourites on the lookout for my next reads. I'll tend to buy a few in a go and then repeat once all are read. Rarely do I seek out or encounter reviews for books and I do no tracking or analysis, other than mental notes of authors I've enjoyed etc.

For non-fiction books my approach is markedly different and I seek out a lot of online and peer reviews. With non-fiction books being a more significant investment (time and cost vs expected advancement of knowledge) I can spend weeks deciding which books will be useful to me.

I track the books I've read and want to read on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com). I currently have about 200 books on my "to read list". I find interesting books suggestions everywhere - on the HN (special topics for books but quite often in the random commments), articles, blogs etc. I don't blindly add new books, I first research it for a few minutes (table of content, reviews, similar books).

I also recommend Farnam Street Blog (http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/) for a lot of interesting suggestions.

The annual threads on HN about, "What was the best book your read in $YEAR", tend to have some brilliant books that I would have never encounted any other way. Bill Gates annual list tends to be solid as well, but only a handful of books each time. Mark Zuckerberg's reading club could potentially be useful too.

I still find a lot of success in just going to a second hand book store and finding gems in a fairly short amount of time too. But obviously more niche books are unlikely to be there.

Goodreads, does tend to be fairly good at identifying authors of a similar theme, but that has only been of limited usage to me.

If you find yourself in the position of saying "Hey, I have some free time; what should I read?" I recommend focusing first on what you want to know or do, secondly on determining what book and articles are likely to contain useful information, and only then determining a plan for what to read. Here is the process I follow.

For each subject in which I am interested, I maintain a bibliography. The most common way entries are added here is by discovering references to books or articles in other things I am reading.

When reading books in physical media, I usually draw an arrow by references or notes that indicate books I should add to these bibliographies. When I am done with a book or article, I go back through and add any such references that still seem relevant to my bibliography. (I do this at the same time I am transcribing notes and quotations, files of which are also an important part of my system.) I usually include a brief note on why I believe this work will be of value and where I got the reference.

Where this becomes useful is when I am pursuing some sort of study. I have learned that I study best with some object in view, so even if my study is for general education, I prepare a syllabus that presents objectives of some sort (code to write, questions to answer, etc.).

Once I have the objectives prepared, I use my living bibliography files to create a reading plan. Of course, once I really delve into a subject, that plan usually expands and I add more references into both my general bibliography and reading plan.

This process provides me an apparatus to pursue my interests in a structured way to make the most of my time. I don't worry much about what to read next except in the context of some such study.

I have found that without this sort of structure to focus my reading, I am in danger of becoming a dilettante. I don't have an exceptional memory, and if I read without a structure, I easily fall into the trap of cultivating superficial knowledge without ever getting deep enough to answer substantive questions or do original work.

I do, however, want to encourage serendipity, so I subscribe to and read periodicals in variety of fields. I have also found The London Review of Books and book reviews in leading newspapers to be useful sources of references and lines of thought that I would probably never otherwise discover.

Forgot to mention the site BookFlocks [1] which interviews people about books that were proven important to their career and life. Thou it looks like it might be dead on new material.

[1] http://bookflocks.com/

Fiction or non-fiction?

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