On repeat recommendations
One thing that I’ve started tracking more closely this year is where I hear about a book and what gives me that final push to pick it up. Whether it’s a prize list, a book box, or a glowing recommendation from a friend, I’ve made a habit of noting my “reason for reading” in my reading journal, along with the title, author, and my unorganized thoughts. Something I’ve been noticing lately is that a decent number of the books that I pick up actually have multiple recommendation sources. I’ll read about it in Olivia Waite’s romance column in the New York Times, then read a review here on Substack. Or I’ll buy a book on a recommendation from the Fiction Matters community, then finally pick it up months later after talking to a friend about it.
I found myself wondering exactly how many pushes it takes for me to read a book and then, deciding to take three of my recent reads as case studies. Here are four books I read recently and the whole history of my deciding to read them, acquiring them, and then actually reading them.
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
I first marked The Priory of the Orange Tree as “want-to-read” in March 2019, about a month after it came out. This was back when I was still using Goodreads and before I started my reading journal so I have no idea why I added it to my TBR, but I suspect it was from general Goodreads hype. Then it sat on my TBR until 2024/2025, when members of the FictionMatters community began chatting about it and my yearning for some really good high fantasy pushed it back towards the forefront of my mind. Sometime last year, it also came highly recommended by a friend whose taste in books I trust. I finally picked up a copy at The Ripped Bodice last year and after vowing to read more long books and craving fantasy, started reading it last Friday. (Seven years after I first marked it as “to read”!) I absolutely loved it.
Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee
I purchased this book from a “Utopia/Dystopia” display at the McNally Jackson store in the Seaport last year, based purely on the cover, blurb, and a vague memory of having loved Tanith Lee’s Claidi Chronicles series as a child. It sat on my shelves, waiting for the right reading mood to strike. Then my fiancé read it, after hearing about it on Reddit and seeing it compared to Ursula K. Le Guin, and enthusiastically encouraged me to read it. (He’s a big sci-fi and speculative fiction reader and we have a shared love of Ursula K. Le Guin.) I ended up reading it in between two very different historical romances and it was the perfect change of pace.
Waist Deep by Linnea Maja Ernst
I bought this one along with Table for One by Emma Gannon while browsing idly on Blackwells, as I sometimes do. I had vague ideas of reading it sometime last summer but it got lost in the shuffle until it was released in the US, where I saw it on a new releases display table at McNally Jackson and wound up chatting with one of the booksellers there about it. Upon hearing it was loosely inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I promptly dug it out and got lost in the Danish woods during a hot day in June.
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower
The first time I heard about this series was when the first installment was featured in last year’s FictionMatters Paperback Summer Reading Guide. I bought it along with a few other titles from the guide that intrigued me and then it languished a bit in a pile of books meant to bar our cats from getting stuck in the corner behind my armchair. Then I started hearing about the series again this spring, courtesy of more FictionMatters readers and Michelle Martin’s lovely review of the series. So many readers whose taste I know and trust told me that I would love these books and they were completely correct.
Something that struck me when I was going back through my reading history is just how big a role the other readers in my life play. A recommendation from someone whose taste I know and trust is often what gives me the final push to pick something up, especially if I know I’ll want to talk about it with them! And it’s a nice reminder that I don’t have to read a book right away to love it or to discuss it in community. It took me seven years to get to The Priory of the Orange Tree and I think I might have loved it even more now than I would have back in 2019.
Let me know how many times you’ve heard about a book before deciding to read it in the comments! (I asked one friend and she said she heard about Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall about six times, between friends, bookish podcasts, and bookstore displays, before she read it this spring!)
Currently reading: How to Fake It in Society by KJ Charles, about a con man who falls in love with his mark.
Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:
I went to Hudson Valley Shakespeare to see their production of As You Like It this past weekend, which I thought especially shone with its use of music and emphasis on the sisterly love between Rosalind and Celia. Their new theater space is gorgeous and you can picnic before the show if you find yourself in the vicinity of Garrison this summer!
That trip was accompanied by an excellent wander through Cold Spring, home to very good ice cream, lots of vintage shops, and a bookstore containing the very best bookstore cat, Buster.
Another weekend highlight was a mini food tour of Brighton Beach with friends, where we feasted upon khachapuri, vareniki, and assorted potato-stuffed pastries and admired the glory of the hot bar at Tashkent Supermarket.
