discovery
books
most of the books i decide to read are handpicked based on my own browsing at a physical bookshop. some are based on recommendations by strangers online, who aren’t recommending them to me specifically, but just talking very loudly about a book they liked.
very few are direct recommendations (“you should read this!”), partly because i think what i like about a book is often illegible even to me (and thus makes it difficult to seek out similar books, let alone express this to someone), and partly because of pathological demand avoidance.
manga
i usually see someone share something on twitter and then i get curious. this is the only way i get recommendations for manga.
i do not entertain manga recommendations by boys.
tracking
i usually keep track of my books on The Storygraph or on my physical media journal. i’m not very good at tracking how many days i spend reading a book, so don’t look at stuff like that.
manga gets tracked on my physical media journal or not at all. if i really like it, i’ll find a way to put it on the storygraph, but i find it clunky to list individual volumes when the thing i “like” is the entire story. if i don’t like it enough to write it down, it’s fine if it falls away without being listed anywhere.
preferences
books i tend to like
- realistic fiction
- “unlikeable” characters
- snappy, concise prose
- disturbing, complicated, or dysfunctional relationships - more often sexual, familial, platonic, situational, etc. than romantic
- a little bit of gothic / horror
- i need to push myself out of my comfort zone sometimes!
- autobiography/memoir especially about family, gender, culture, belonging, &c.
- stories with female main characters
- stories that show the passage of time
- stories with non-english language mixed in elegantly — usually also to do with the culture that language comes from
- contemporary essays, usually with some humor
- by asian authors
- standalone titles > series
- i’m trying to read more classics, as i tend to have a good time with them.
books i avoid
- fantasy, sci-fi, and sometimes even stuff set in very rural locations – anything too far removed from what is familiar
- i’m character-driven, not world-driven
- flowery prose and long, vivid descriptions
- old man protagonists
- young adult, romance, romantasy, as genres — although not entirely! it’s more that i know most won’t be my cup of tea.
- good representation but mediocre writing
- for graphic novels: pretty art but mediocre writing
- “oh no this person is missing, and in the process of trying to find them we’ve found out they are not who they seem”
- surrealist fiction
- nonfiction that is too jokey or productivitycore
- nonfiction that takes a japanese word and builds a whole philosophy around it and is not by someone who is japanese
- romance where one of them dies at the end.
- tacky, corporate, or highly ornate book covers (sorry i Do judge a book by its cover…)
there are, of course, always exceptions. one of my fave books is a romance where one of them dies at the end, so…
manga
see manga preferences.
reading habits
- i read more physical books: i like to write in them, i like having them on my shelf, and i like not looking at a screen. sometimes i’ll buy an e-book if i really can’t find the book i want, but i really dislike reading off of PDFs.
- i bookmark however the hell i decide in the moment: dog-ear, receipt, actual bookmark. i’m not very precious about my books…
- i usually buy books while traveling: i just think the selection is usually better.
- i write in my books: i try to put annotations in pencil, but i highlight anyway, which kind of defeats the purpose of using a pencil, so sometimes i use pen anyway. if the paper is darker, ink is better.
- i’m picky about margins: see previous bullet for the reason.
- i read intermittently: even if i like a book, i’m not usually in it over consecutive days. i’ll naturally spend some days doing other things then come back to it.
- I WILL BINGE READ MANGA IF I CAN: i read comics voraciously.