What next?

Susan Choi

How does one decide what to read next? When Susan Choi is asked how she decides in an interview for The Writer's Library, she describes her choice as arbitrary. "I tend to have a lot of books around that I haven't read, and so a lot of it is visual, like they're lying around."

The trouble with this approach, it seems to me, is that it would be too easy to ignore books that aren't lying around. The newest acquisitions, which haven't yet been shelved, would usually be the first ones read.

Other readers, and these include some of the writers interviewed for The Writer's Library, find an author they like and try to read everything they can by that author in something like a reading binge. Others focus on a particular kind of book they like, such as romance novels, thrillers, mysteries, Civil War histories or whatever.

When making my own reading choices I try to balance randomness with deliberation. At a restaurant it is usually easier to decide what to order from a small menu than a large one, and so when selecting a book I seek ways to narrow my choices before I have to choose. Thus I have a small bookcase that serves as something like the bench the coach has to choose from at a sporting event. When looking for a book to read, I go to this bookcase. Do I want fiction or nonfiction? Do I feel like a light book or something more serious? Instead of having to review my entire library, I just choose from these relatively few books. Then I go to other bookcases or boxes and grab another unread book of about the same size to fill the vacant space.

Meanwhile I have a small box filled with novels by authors whose last names begin with a certain letter of the alphabet. Right now that letter is C. When I finish one C book, I reach blindly into the box and pick out another one. When the box is empty, I will go to my storage unit and fill it with books by D authors.

I have another small book case filled with books, mostly thick ones, that will easily lie open on the table to make them easy to read while I'm eating. I call these my breakfast books. The Evening Star, reviewed here recently, was a breakfast book. Now on my breakfast bar is a Baldacci thriller.

This may seem like a complicated system for choosing what to read next, but for me it simplifies matters while at the same time making the selection process more interesting, more like a game.