In which I rant about finding new authors
I live dangerously close to the library. I’m not talking dangerous for my health. Oh, no. I mean, I live so close to the library that I go there every single day and check out a metric shit ton of books. I’m almost at the 100 book limit. Unless I can steal my roommate’s library card, then I can have 200 books! Er. Did I say steal? I meant, borrow.
See what I mean? Dangerously close.
Anyway, today, as I was walking up and down the aisles of bookshelves, I was reminded of when I was younger. I would spend hours and hours and hours wandering around my library. Back then, it was all about finding new authors and new stories to fall in love with. Social media wasn’t nearly as big, so my only way of finding new books was to literally pick them up and see them.
Now, with social media, I feel like I am almost overwhelmed with the amount of books being thrown at me. (Okay, so no one is literally throwing books at me. If they were, I would be happy, not overwhelmed.) I would say approximately 90% of my newsfeed is authors, bloggers, publicists and publishers telling me what great new book is coming out soon, or how this author is a-freaking-mazing.
I’m not complaining about this – I have found some truly fantastic books this way. Plus, I’m a reviewer. People want me to read their books and review them. It’s part of the job description. But. But I miss the old days. I miss walking up to a bookshelf, randomly pulling a book off and discovering a new author that way. I miss knowing nothing about a book before picking it up. I don’t care if one blogger thought it was the Greatest Book Ever Written but another blogger thought it was Utter Crap. (Not that I let others’ opinions affect my reading.)
For the past few years, I haven’t been able to spend so much time at a library. Just wandering around, waiting to see what catches my fancy. But now that I’m closer? Oh yeah, you can be certain that I’m spending hours and hours and even more hours at the library, finding completely new to me authors/books. And it is amazing.
What about you? Do you get to spend hours and hours at the library, finding new stuff? Or do you online find new books through social media?