Musing Monday...Thanks a Lot Guys.

Let me put on my thinking cap and check out this weeks Musing Monday from MizB at Should Be Reading ...

How do you decide to read a book by an author you haven’t read before? What sort of recommendations count most highly in making that decision?

Honestly, I have so many books to read by authors I know, it takes some motivation to pick upon something by an unknown writer.
But a strong recommendation and an interesting sounding plot can convince me.
Ok, maybe it is not really that hard.
Without question, the number one source of those recommendations would be my fellow bloggers.
And over time I have developed a small group of bloggers whose tastes I think are most like mine and whose opinions I take more seriously.
What did I do before I started blogging and reading blogs? Oh yes, I remember. I did not have hundreds of books in my To Be Read pile and had to actually 'find' a next book to read.
Yeah, thanks a lot guys.
A whole, huge TBR pile of thanks. ;-)

But a certain percentage of recommendations come from other sources still. The NY Times Book Reviews is one I still read and often pick up some interesting 'new-to-me' authors. On occasion, in the past, I used to find new authors in other publications..People magazine, Newsweek, the Philadelphia Inquirer...but to tell ya the truth I don't read any of those publications anymore. So many book, so little time. Who has time to read the news?!

There are a few new sources to make up for them, some I am sure a number of you are familiar with. Shelf Awareness, is one. I click on one of those ads,  maybe there is a little video, some blurbs from other authors and before you know it, I am hooked. Library Thing Early Reviewers is another. Ever month thousands of couple of a whole pile of books are offered. So of course, if you are going to request any, you have to read all the descriptions. At best, you may win one book, but now I have found so many more I wish I could read and a few I will just have to buy, usually by author that I did not know before.

So some of you may ask why am I even trying to get another book from Early Reviewers or an ARC offered on Shelf Awareness? Don't I have enough?
What does that have to do with anything??
Because I want the newest. I will admit it..it is so cool to be reading a book that is not even out yet, whether it is by an author I love or someone new and fresh to me
Because it is a sickness folks, an addiction.
But not that bad an addiction as addictions goes.

Or so I tell myself. :-)