I'm always looking for new books to read but I don't usually ask for recommendations because I know my taste differs from other people's taste (remember, of the Four Doorways into books, I'm looking for the "words" doorway. It can have a rip-roaring plot but if the writing isn't great it's just an OK book to me.). So to find leads to books I might like to read I read reviews and some book blogs and I keep of list of books that sound interesting.
One of the blogs I regularly read, Eiger, Monch & Jungfrau: A Mountain of Books is written by someone who teaches in the English department of Hendrix College (and is also a host of the One Bright Book Podcast). Their reading is far more erudite than mine and is more oriented to books in translation than my reading is, but I've also gotten some leads on books I've really enjoyed from them.
One of the things I like about that blog is that every January/February they turn the blog over to guests who post about what they read the preceding year. Most of those people also like to read a lot of books in translation but, again, I've also gotten some good leads from them. Every once in a while someone posts about a year of reading that could have been mine. This year Anne Cohen was a guest blogger and many of the books she blogged about I've read and enjoyed. And, like me, she said she is "always taken aback by how many mysteries I've read in a given year." She wrote this about mysteries:
As I was finishing this, Dorian and his One Bright Book podcast colleagues were talking about how hard it sometimes can be to settle into a new novel; to become used to the rhythm of that specific universe. For me, a pleasure of mysteries, and mystery series in particular, is the absence of some of that acclimatization. [Ed. – Nicely put! Helps me see why genre fiction can be so comforting.] Mysteries are like sonnets—the typicality or transparency of their framework makes it fun to see how well a writer sets up character and plot; the bad or lazy writing can be howlingly obvious and the clever more enjoyable. [Ed. – Absolutely!]
That resonated with me. It also explained to me why I like mystery series even though the words doorway is the most important doorway for me. I've always found that hard to reconcile (even though I'm the first to say that genre writing doesn't mean "bad" writing.)
Anyway, check out that blog and go back through the posts of the last month to see what a variety of people read last year.
