How to Choose a Book

Our book club will be discussing Nectar by Lily Prior for our next meeting.  I'm not sure what the consensus will be, but one friend has already told me that she hated it.  H said, after finishing it that "some books don't need to be written."  I found the book rather dull, actually.  Nonetheless, since the book takes place in Italy, perhaps we'll have a great potluck with Italian food.

So, how does one go about choosing a good book?  Of course, the best way, I think, is to ask a friend with similar tastes to yours.  Or if a favorite author comes out with a new book, that's a good hint.  But sometimes those wells are dry.  I thought to myself this morning that there should be a website that is set up like Netflix where you can rate a variety of books and then it can predict for you what books you might like.

I found one such site, although I have yet to try it out.  It's called yournextread.com.  Type in the title of a book that you like, and it suggests other books it thinks are similar.

I'll put that site to use after I finish the next two books on my stack.  I'm hoping to really enjoy the newest Murakami book, IQ84, and Lev Grossman's The Magicians (supposedly a Harry Potter book for grown-ups).