Your next favorite book from SelectReads

Posted on May 11, 2017 at 6:00 am

By Carlie Hoffman

Before the internet, I had only one way to serendipitously find my next read at the library: wander the book stacks until an interesting book cover or an evocative title caught my eye. Fortunately, finding books through this process often lead to new favorites.

Now I have even more ways to find a good book. Websites like Amazon.com,* Goodreads, and LibraryThing offer a lot of suggestions, but they all have a big drawback—their suggestions are based on the titles you were just searching on their websites. The problem with this is that I end up getting the same kinds of book suggestions over and over. What about variety? How can I stumble on an amazing book that I don’t even know I want to read? That’s what I had enjoyed about searching the shelves in person—finding something unexpected and new.

There’s good news. Spokane County Library District now offers a new service called SelectReads. This service sends you an email each month showing you book titles on the topics and genres you sign up for. The emails include the most popular 10 titles in all kinds of fiction categories, like romance, mysteries, and science fiction, as well as nonfiction categories. Plus if you have a favorite author, you can get an email alert. You can even get email alerts for eBooks, view award winners, and so much more.

My favorite categories for books so far are Cooking, Food & Wine, Crafts & Hobbies, and Science. And there are so many more topics if you have different interests than I do. Also I’ve experimented with the ‘My SelectReads’ feature and found out that it allows me to create a list based on topics that I make up myself.

The best part about any list from SelectReads is that all of the books are owned by the District and link back to the catalog so you can place a hold right away.

Visit our Digital Library and click on SelectReads to browse and sign up for email alerts. Maybe your next favorite book will find you!

*This link directs you to the AmazonSmile website, which supports the Friends of the Spokane County Library District when you shop, at no additional charge to you.

Tags: authors, book groups, book news, book recommendations, book updates, booklists, books, new books, newsletter, popular books, reading, SelectReads