everything happens at once

[aamcnamara]

Pursuant to previous post: Oh! Aha. Hmm. Your comments are all both edifying and gracious, and I will have to read them again and think about this for a while. Many points that people made make a lot of sense.

I suspect that I have been greatly spoiled in the point of independent bookstores, growing up in Minneapolis (where there are a lot of independents, several of which I live near for various values of near) and then coming to college (where there is a pretty nice independent bookstore right across the street).

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Brain a bit scattered from midterms et cetera. Yesterday I skived off studying for an hour and a half after dinner, was an accomplice to filching a tray from the campus center, and went sledding on the big hill behind one of the dormitories. Today it rained, and I did a presentation and wrote a midterm.

Tomorrow they claim it will snow again, and maybe I will have collected enough bits of brain to work on the paper, essay, novel critiques that are due next week. And, oh, decide if I'm going to apply for that physics REU that takes freshman that I found online today and, if so, politely and awkwardly approach my professors after class to see if they will write me recommendations. Hurray.

Comments

[aliseadae]

I do like getting specific books sometimes but that isn't so often. Mostly I enjoy buying whatever it is that catches my eye.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

no, yeah. I like browsing too. I was just trying to say that also I like browsing the internets, because then it's not limited to whatever that particular store has in stock right then. I end up spending tons of time looking through Amazon's recs for me and putting random words in and seeing what comes up.

(You miss out on flipping thorugh the books though, which is really a bummer if you want to browse cookbooks, artbooks, gardening books, etc.)

[aliseadae]

What are your methods for browsing the internet? How do you pick out what seems interesting? How do you find books that you buy? In bookstores I browse the shelf and there will be something in the middle, Interfictions 2 say, that I've been meaning to buy and I remember and buy it. How do you do that? I'd like to actually spend that Powell's gift certificate.

[jennygadget.livejournal.com]

Well, part of what I like about Amazon is that they give you recs based on not just what you've ordered but also what is on your wish list. So if you put in a bunch of titles that you like, it will start giving you recs based on that. Chances are you have already read or heard of a lot of them, but it lets you tell it that, and then gives you new suggestions instead. (I dunno if Powell's does the same, but you can always browse Amazon and buy from Powell's.) They aren't always the best recs, but I've come across a lot of books that I probably wouldn't have found otherwise that way.

Amazon's lists are pretty awesome too, because the are reader created lists. So if you find one that is on a genre you like, and you recognize and like a lot of the stuff they list, then you know to take a closer look at the stuff you don't recognize.

I also google authors I like and see if they have anything new that I didn't know about. - This would be the only reason why I know Edwards Tufte came out with a new book recently, most stores don't carry his stuff because they are expensive and not general interest. - OI see if tey have older stuff, too. Sometimes they have series that are now backlist but still new to me. Or I see if the authors I like have lists of what they read (a lot of them do). Fansites usually start talking about other stuff too....

Honestly, I always have the opposite problem - too many books and not enough time or $! :)

[aamcnamara.livejournal.com]

Huh. Like aliseadae I mostly do not browse books online--if I find something about a new book by an author I like, it's likely through LJ or my other online reading. Amazon recommendations are, to me, mostly just that it tells me a couple of books I've read already when I'm looking something up on their website.

So it is really interesting to hear how they can be used constructively--I won't start right this moment, since I'd probably have to input a lot of stuff at the beginning to make it give me interesting suggestions, but I will definitely think about it.