After posting my Trojanpear's Book Club video yesterday, I wanted to discuss something relevant to the video that I touched on in the video. As you know, the book selection, The Normal Christian Life, was not my original choice for this month's book club book. I will do that book (series) at another time, but I did not do it this month because I was asked to read this book on a recommendation from a friend, and they wanted the book back when I finished. Well, I read it, but if you saw my video, I did not enjoy the book very much. This poses the question: When someone recommends a book to you, is it as good to you as they thought it would be? In my case while this did not work out well, I understand that is based on peoples interest in the type of book you are reading. As an example, my sister prefers romance themed books, so if I recommend to her a Godzilla book, she will probably not like it (or even read it).
I thought back to other times when I read books that were recommended to me, and I am surprised at how many of my favorite books were either recommended or read because I read a book that was recommended in the same series or author. These situations range from family members to internet reviewers. My mom thought I would enjoy books written by Dick Francis because the stories revolve arouind horse racing. My second grade teacher bought a book for me for Christmas that I never heard of at the time that she thought I would like. It was called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. The strangest one was when netflix had its own critic who also had a blog. I read his blog regularly. One day he posted a different topic about a famous author who passed away that day. The author was apparently on of his favorite writers. He used a diffent name on this particular series. The name was Ed McBain. The series was the 87th precient series. He made the recommendation to his readers to try the book he felt was the best of them all: Eight Black Horses. For some reason, I felt compelled to check the book out and read it. It is now one of my all time favorite books and I am working on reading more books by Ed McBain. You may have seen several of his books in my collection in the video Bunnicula Series.
How have recommendations impacted your reading? What are some great books you were introduced to because someone made the recommendation?
