What are you reading in 2025?

[Old Fezziwig]

Look for independent and used bookstores. Books don’t have to be brand new to be new to you. Check your local library. Interlibrary loan and WorldCAT are great. Check places like Goodreads, Storygraph, and LibraryThing.

I'd add that, if you can, find out what the authors you enjoy have enjoyed reading. (Either specific books or authors generally.) I've found a lot of good stuff that I'd have never found otherwise that way.

 

[Voadam]

On another note, where are folks buying ebooks now? I refuse to continue with Amazon now that they removed the ability for me to archive my books.

For me I have gotten a bunch on humble bundle sales, lots of epub huge series for things like 40k, Shadowrun, the Malazan books, Battletech, Dragonlance, and Pathfinder. It is intermittent but more than I think I am going to read in my lifetime.

Currently they have a Dragonlance novels bundle and a Delta Green one that includes RPG titles, VTT files, and novels.

 

[Nellisir]

I think a lot of people didn’t hear about it. I only heard about it in 2008 while reading a book by Loren Coleman I think (and I have lived in Mass all my life but a five year stint in San Diego)

I'm in NH and I've never heard of it.

 

[Nellisir]

If you’re looking for interesting non-trendy stuff, I’d suggest staying out of the chain bookstores. They stock whatever sells best and strip the rest.

Look for independent and used bookstores. Books don’t have to be brand new to be new to you. Check your local library. Interlibrary loan and WorldCAT are great. Check places like Goodreads, Storygraph, and LibraryThing.

Generally I agree, but Barnes & Nobles has apparently been allowing more local control over ordering, and whoever orders for the Albany B&N is my hero.

 

[Nellisir]

"Rom-fantasy" has definitely had an upswing, and frankly I'm not that upset by it. Bookstores don't stock as much as they used to, and it IS harder to find something in a particular niche, but I regularly find really good books. Men don't read as much as they used to, and they don't read as much as women, so if the rom-fantasy niche gets prop up the fantasy genre as a whole for a bit, I'm fine with it. This sort of thing happens.

 

[Cadence]

Finished most of the latest John Sandford Lucas & Virgil novel on the flight out and killed it off in the hotel (holy F, the author is 81!?) and got a few more chapters in the Rex Stout biography done on the first leg of the flight back.

 

[prabe]

I'd add that, if you can, find out what the authors you enjoy have enjoyed reading. (Either specific books or authors generally.) I've found a lot of good stuff that I'd have never found otherwise that way.

I have in at least one instance found an author I enjoyed reading because they blurbed another author I enjoyed reading. (This is probably exactly backward from how that's expected to work.)

 

[prabe]

"Rom-fantasy" has definitely had an upswing, and frankly I'm not that upset by it. Bookstores don't stock as much as they used to, and it IS harder to find something in a particular niche, but I regularly find really good books. Men don't read as much as they used to, and they don't read as much as women, so if the rom-fantasy niche gets prop up the fantasy genre as a whole for a bit, I'm fine with it. This sort of thing happens.

Romance Fiction is the engine that keeps the book publishing business--at least the fiction side of it--going.

 

[Retros_x]

I'd add that, if you can, find out what the authors you enjoy have enjoyed reading. (Either specific books or authors generally.) I've found a lot of good stuff that I'd have never found otherwise that way.

Thats a big one. Authors have good taste in books - which make sense - and when you find out what the authors you like like for themselves you often hit a gold mine.

 

[prabe]

Thats a big one. Authors have good taste in books - which make sense - and when you find out what the authors you like like for themselves you often hit a gold mine.

There's a reasonable case to be made that what you like about an author--or any other creator--is their taste, rather than their technical skill; so blurbs or other mentions can work really well. Of course, there are some authors whose blurbs I take as warnings to put the book down.