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Tumblereads 25: How We Pick Books
70 Plays2 days ago
Holly asks Erin and Ingrid: how do they decide what to read?
Show notes at smutreport.com/podcast
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Theme Overview
00:00:03
Speaker
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Smut Report podcast. um We're doing tumble reads today, and which means we're just, you know, talking about books. And that's that's it. We're talking about books.
Host Introductions and Reading Preferences
00:00:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:00:18
Speaker
ah romance as opposed to what we ah always do any other time yeah romance books and like just like every time um but anyway i'm holly i'm ingrid and i'm erin um and i'll be emceeing today and here i'm just gonna like throw out my question for people do it so my question is how do you guys decide what you're gonna read next Oh, no. Oh, okay. So I want to know, i mean, for like, how, how do books end up on your TBR? And how do you get books off your TBR into your read pile? Or like, what are the things that draw you to books?
00:00:59
Speaker
Just I, you know, how
Factors Influencing Book Selection
00:01:01
Speaker
do we? ah You know what? This is a great, this is a great question. The short answer is the ADHD decides. I mean, yes. She just blows where the wind takes her. let me Well, no, here's here's how it really goes.
00:01:20
Speaker
ah Because we do these, you know, um let's talk tropes or... What other things do we talk about periodically? Some of these sort of catch-all buckets um and talk about how they work for us.
00:01:36
Speaker
And that definitely plays into how appealing I'm going to find a book, right? So people complain frequently, and this is why I think this is a great question, because especially lately people have been complaining, well, especially lately, And especially in the very much online space, which I guess is just one of the reason not to be there. um People are like, oh, I hate the tropification of romance.
00:02:01
Speaker
Like, why are we advertising books this way? Is our attention deficit so bad that we can't even read blurbs? No, I don't have time for blurbs. Also, a lot of the time, first of all, first of all, a blurb, unless it's very explicit about the one thing that's going to catch my interest, may or may not hook me. Especially when it's one of these random first person blurbs that gives me like no information because it's trying to be edgy and like angsty about how... Oh yeah.
00:02:32
Speaker
She knew she was going die. I just couldn't. Can you just get the plot? what ah Yeah, what are you doing? Yeah. so Well, you know what? Those are actually really useful because I can usually be like – because they're usually written in a very similar style to the actual book. And I'm like, oh, don't like that voice. Moving on.
00:02:51
Speaker
That's true. I guess that's true. so But I realized that I really like – This method of describing books. Well, there's a variety of things that are will catch my eye because I go in different places. Like if I'm on Instagram, and there's a little graphic, and it has a good arrangement of those like twirly arrows with like a variety of little things that's going on in the book. Then maybe one of those will catch my eye in addition to the book cover. Sometimes I'm just like, oh my gosh, that title is magnificent. Like Holly and I were talking yesterday.
00:03:24
Speaker
and this is when Ingrid, you were like, I was asleep. Sorry. But Holly and I were talking and ah I ran across a title and I was like, this title for a honeymoon romance is perfection.
00:03:40
Speaker
Chef's kiss. It was killer honeymoon for a romantic suspense. Yeah.
Social Media and Book Recommendations
00:03:45
Speaker
i'll do it you know stuff like that but i've read other stuff i think i have a club saturday smutty six of books that i picked up just because of the titles don't i so sometimes it's that but yeah i mean i read like unsolicited duke pick yeah because of the title yeah yeah and i mostly don't regret that decision so right sometimes things are just a little bit fun um Yeah, so if I'm like scrolling through, you know, in the before times Twitter, now, I don't know, threads are blue sky or something and somebody has a post up and it's like one of my favorite is tropes where I can almost 100% rely on a fun read, you know, I'll be like, okay. Okay.
00:04:29
Speaker
And the problem is, because I do that, then my TBR, which is over a thousand books, does not have that. And I'm like, scroll, scroll, scroll. What do I read? La, la, la, la, la. And it's like, none of these look like fun to read.
00:04:42
Speaker
And then I'll go ah through a periodic, I must figure out my TBR. And I'll start reading about the book again. I'll be like, oh, that sounds like fun.
Managing TBR Lists
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah. ah like you What you need to do is just like tag your TBR some way. Well, that's part of my process. I just added like in the, it's over a thousand books though. So I add them just like boop, boop, boop, but I don't tag them when I add them. So I was like, now I must go through my thousand plus books and tag them all so that I know. So that when I'm like, oh, I really want to read a best friends to lovers or a spy versus spy or whatever, you know, like I can just click that tag and find the
00:05:22
Speaker
two-rate ones. Erin, that is such your breakfast problem. That is such your breakfast problem all over again where you're like, need 100% variety but also organized variety.
Reading Phases and Recommendations
00:05:33
Speaker
You know what I mean? Yes, exactly. My brain is a really fun place to be sometimes.
00:05:40
Speaker
i i feel like i do i do I feel like my way is a little exhausting. i i get curious about something or I'm like, oh, I liked this one thing, whatever it is. And then I'll i'll do ah tunnel vision. I'll do the all of it until I'm sick of it. And then i never then I go total pivot and I will do something totally different. So for example, this is how I ended up reading all of Kate C. Wells, everything she's ever written.
00:06:07
Speaker
Because I was like, I can't figure this lady out. She just wrote a book about truck nuts and it was deeply sensitive. And I was like, I have to read all of them now. And so then I read all of her books and I almost made myself sick on it. But I was like, everything she she read, I have to read now. and then i And then I was like, and now I need to read something about sparkly fairies with with pointy ears. So – Or it'll be like all enemies to lovers or it'll be every Scotty McCotty book that's ever been written. I want to read all of them. And so – and sometimes though, sometimes it'll end up being where I binge really hard and then I'll pivot back to something else. But if I'm looking for something that's just new and I'm like, okay, I'm stuck. I'm in a rut. I will i do like to do – this is – I like to do – you know when you go to a party and you're like – you meet somebody and you're like, I don't – I can't tell if I'm going to like you or not, you know? Mm-hmm.
00:07:00
Speaker
And you'll be like, oh, um yeah. So what do you think about, um you know?
Navigating Genre Choices
00:07:06
Speaker
public education and and then you'll kind of like feel it out and then you'll be like oh yeah okay we're aligned on things so i've noticed that when i look online if there are certain books where if someone's like oh i love this book this series and i'll be like yeah we're not the same kind of reader you know what i mean so what i what i do is i'll look and see if people like or dislike the same books that i like and dislike that i know that probably we have similar tastes and so i'll take their recommendations
00:07:31
Speaker
Conversely, if someone's like, I absolutely hated, let's just say The Bride by Julie Garwood. I don't know who would. That would be – you'd have to be banana pants crazy to hate ah The Bride by Julie Garwood. But if someone was like, ugh, The Bride by Julie Garwood, Culty by Mariana Zapata, ew, I'd be like, okay, so what what other books don't you like? I'll read those. You know what I mean?
00:07:52
Speaker
Yeah. So I was like, okay, that's very, you're right, that's a little bit more labor intensive than I would have expected. so hot So with like, okay, I'm going to read all of it, and you did your big romanticy binge for like whatever. that was a problem. How did you find it?
00:08:09
Speaker
Can I go back? Like, instead of asking about romanticcy, I want to ask when you did your Hottie McCotty
Exploring Bookstores and Book Formats
00:08:15
Speaker
binge. Yeah. how How are you finding those? Right? Because romanticcy, and I feel like you can just be like, go to any bookstore, go on KU, go basically go to any platform. Yeah. And how does she decide which ones to read? Because there's like a thousand of them. I guess I'm thinking the opposite of you. You're thinking more digging and I'm thinking, how do you decide out of the plethora of options? Yeah.
00:08:35
Speaker
Which one? So when it comes to something like the Hottie McScotty, because um because here's here's why that's an interesting question, Holly, because there's a lot of backlist, right? Right. And so, and like, you know, so honestly, um i When that phase – that was recent too. When that phase happened, I was hitting up a lot of used bookstores.
00:08:58
Speaker
And so I would look and I'd and i'd be like, oh, okay. you know i Usually I'd find one and I'd be like, oh, Lindsay Sands. She writes a lot of Hottie McScotty books you know or you know obviously Julie Garwood or there's a bunch of different authors. And I would find them by – looking at used bookstores or like the library but the library I've had less luck with honestly um but yeah I I've done it that way okay so question about that follow-on question do you think you were successful because of the availability and visibility of the paperbacks versus it's harder to see them in the digital format from like the library or online
00:09:34
Speaker
Well, I think, yes. And then also, i think, and this is going to sound really snooty, but um it's hard for me to tell, because you can read a blurb on online, but it's hard for me to tell, like, if it if it's, like, I want, when I'm reading backlist stuff, but I'm reading older stuff, I want to be, like, an established, like, so you know, author, someone who really did Hottie McScotty well in the 90s or whatever, or the 2000s.
00:09:58
Speaker
And I feel like when it's a digital, sometimes you can't tell. i' and the, the the writing quality can be wildly different whereas when I'm looking at the book I can open it and I can look at it and I can be like oh yeah that'll work you know the benefit of physical copy yeah I can just look and be like this will work you know I can usually i I pick up the book I look at the cover because why wouldn't you is there a step back oh joy flip in the back read the blurb The blurb will be like, this is going to be wildly misogynistic or, oh, I can tell right now that this might be it. So then if I'm on the fence, I just thumb through it and you can tell immediately just from looking at the rhythm.
Publication Cycle Challenges
00:10:36
Speaker
on I don't even have to really read it. You can just tell looking at it. You're like, oh, yeah, this will work, you know. Um, so yeah, that's how i do the older backlist stuff. And then when it comes to the, to the romanticity stuff, that one's been a lot harder for me because, um, there's so much going on and it's books are being published so fast. And I feel like so many of them are, um, like copy paste, similar type.
00:11:00
Speaker
thing and so I have gotten very fatigued over the past year and um that's why i never used to scope out other people's other readers recommendations the way that I have this past year so like I never looked at lists before I just read whatever I want if I wanted to read it I read it if it was a an author request I read it if it was on netgalley and I thought it looked good I read it um but this year I was like it it It got really hard to sort sift like the wheat from the chaff when it came to books because some of them are just – I mean if it makes people happy, and more power to them. But I – you know, when you're reading that many books, as many books as we read, like it's – I'm not – I cannot read books that are poorly –
00:11:43
Speaker
assembled.
Romanticy Genre Exploration
00:11:44
Speaker
Okay, here's a follow-up question to that. Sorry, Holly, I'm just going to derail this completely because now I'm curious. the So I'm thinking of when I read all the MM hockey romance books.
00:11:55
Speaker
All of them. And For me, looking at different places, it was pretty easy to catch the low-hanging fruit, like the ones that frequently get recommended in just about any list, right? Yeah. So maybe it started with heated rivalry. Probably it started with, well, maybe I read One Hockey Romance before that. But, um you know, so even now with the resurgence of heated rivalry and particularly because of the show and then all of the, you know, read-alike posts and articles and whatever that come out,
00:12:26
Speaker
came out do they all have basically the same list it's pretty much you'll catch the same like the same five and everybody will have two others yeah that are different Yeah. And so it's like, I read those and it's some of the some of it's like, oh, I see. Why? And then as you start getting down into the, you know, 100 or 200 books, it's much harder to find the standout stuff. Whereas then I think, oh, well, if this if this had been my first book in this category...
00:12:58
Speaker
maybe I would have felt differently about it. But now I've read, you know, i started with a hundred other books. Yeah. And now this is like a hundred. So it's feeling repetitive. So where do you land in that category in the romanticism? Well, I think, in that where yeah, I think very similarly. So, you know, um that's one of the reasons why I started kind of grouping them. um so I,
00:13:21
Speaker
i I did – I'm working now on kind of like grouping sub-sub categories within romanticity. And and i feel like what – that's when I – I feel like – here's what it is.
00:13:37
Speaker
With romanticity, I feel like people come in via romance or they come in via fantasy. That's a gross overgeneralization, but that's what I'm doing today. So I feel like people who come in via romance are a lot more open to books that are like – you know Kindle Unlimited, you know published rapid fire by authors, maybe a little bit less developmental editing, but plenty of tension and lots and lots of sex. You know what i mean? um I feel like people who are more fantasy are they are not interested in that type of thing. They're more interested in the longer... series they want um extensive plot building so i'll give you an example um when i was saying that like sometimes i'll um you can tell people who like when people give recommendations and you're like oh yeah i like the books you like or i don't like the books you like so there's this series called it's guild um it's like the yeah the midas king midas series you know with the okay plated plated prisoner is the series um anyway um so it's it's a
00:14:40
Speaker
Romanticy that veers more toward fantasy is long. So I recommended it to someone who reads romance and she was like, dude, that almost killed me. Like that was way too long. It was so boring. And I was like, oh, okay. So you can kind of tell like people who are like, I i really liked that series.
00:14:54
Speaker
Nine times out of 10, it's one of those series where the first book is, there's a pivot after the first book. So if you, read the first one, right, and you're more of like a romance person, you're not going to like it. Like the series, you're not going to like it. If you're the kind of person who likes the long game and you're more of like a fantasy reader, i think more people tend to like that because it it has more of a fantasy
Researching Similar Books
00:15:14
Speaker
feel to it. It's a long journey. And the first book is a setup. It's not really like, you know, so to answer your question, when I'm looking for recommendations, like nine times out of 10, if I see someone who's like, I hated the Plated Prisoner series, i you can almost always peg like, you came in the romance route.
00:15:29
Speaker
You know what i mean? Whereas people who are like, oh, I i actually really liked the Plated Prisoner series. Then I'll be like, oh, I bet you also like Throne of Glass. do you know what i mean? Or I bet you also like, you know, um ah Rachel Gillig, for example, you know, um people who go in the romance route, I would expect them to like authors where it's more romance based and it's not as long of a slog. So that's kind of how I sort it is. I look at recommendations when I'm looking when I'm like, OK, mean, like so lately I've been trying to flesh it out. So I'm not lately in my romance thing. I haven't been reading books that I'm I'm reading more to flesh out.
00:16:07
Speaker
my theories and hypotheses. So I'm like, okay, well, I need to read some more that are like this. So then I'll look up on you know, online and I'll search and I'll, or I'll look on, you know, the socials and I'll be like, okay, well, if you liked this book, then what else have you read that's like this so that I can find things that are similar so finding vampire books that are romantic and not paranormal paranormal yeah yeah stuff like that where i'm like okay i can i know this book is like that find more like that so that's how i've been doing it interesting all right holly without the adhd how do you do it uh well you guys have like methods for
00:16:50
Speaker
I'm just corralling the dopamine seeking a little bit. right i I mean, i go almost always based on blurbs and recommendations and reviews.
Book Selection Criteria
00:17:01
Speaker
Like, like ah honestly, the best way to get me to read a book is to review is for someone to review it who, like, I know they have good taste. Right. you know um but sometimes but like but if i see a book i'm like oh that looks interesting if i don't get it immediately is it gone forever it's gone forever yeah it's gone forever like if i want to read it i have to like go into my liby account and be like i'm putting that book on hold um otherwise i'm not gonna read it and i max out on my holds so any books that i'm like oh that's interesting i'm like
00:17:39
Speaker
ah well and so i like have it I have it like saved in my Libby and i start and I just started doing that last week and I was like oh oh man I have like 50 books saved in here that I put in here like six years ago that I then haven't thought about since I wonder what I have in here I haven't looked yet because I don't have any don't have any room um you know and yes or or if it's like a new release that I see someone talking about I'm like oh that looks interesting then I'll go on that galley and they're like okay Yeah.
00:18:09
Speaker
but basically like there are the way it like i'll pick up a book if i've read the author before and i know i like their voice because for me i feel like voice and writing style is the most important make or break thing um But the way to get me to read a book that I haven't read before is basically like an unusual premise or lesbians either in like – I was going to say – Pirate lesbians in space. Yeah. like in space on a cooking show or like in a historical romance um that's right you know i've i've done have i done my lesbians in the kitchen list i think i have yes you have you okay so obviously i need to make a list of the best like regency lesbians i'll work on that
00:19:00
Speaker
I'll get on that.
Exploration of Genres
00:19:01
Speaker
um Or, you know, historical lesbians. um Yeah. So I don't know. I just like, but I don't do, I don't do deep dives like you guys do.
00:19:12
Speaker
um It's better. You know, even when I. Like I went on a like a little Charlotte Stein binge last year. um But I read like four of her books. And then I was like, okay, and her backlist is huge. She's, you know, she's got like a 40 book backlist. But I'm like, I read four. and I'm like, okay, i I get what she's doing. And now I'm gonna go do something else. self-control what's that like well no because like once I read one and I'm like okay I'm bored because like I I know what beat she's gonna hit um and she I really like her stuff her narrative like her narrative voice is really fun for me I really like it um but when I get to the point where I'm like not surprised by what's happening or I'm like oh yeah I
00:19:58
Speaker
am expecting this and it could be that book number four was just kind of a dud but it you know although i did then circle back you know two months later and read another four of her books so i'll go kind of palate cleanser yeah a different books and also when ingrid is like holly i found a ridiculous hero and a brassy heroine and then sometimes it goes and Sometimes it goes. Although not lately because her all of her holds are on the auto. I know. Well, no, but one ah one of them is a book that Ingrid recommended to me. I'm just waiting for it to come in. Which one's that one? ah ah Hang on. Let me check.
00:20:37
Speaker
I've recommended a bunch lately. i'm like, Holly, you have to read this book. yeah I feel like you're good about that. I'm usually good about finding somebody else's recommendation and being like, I'm never going to read this, but Holly would probably like it.
00:20:49
Speaker
don't usually do that for you, Ingrid, but your reading is more like mine where it's like, Yeah, I feel like I taking us today i have more specific more narrow tastes. um Divine Rivals. Oh, yeah. ross That one was really that one's a good one. I mean, you're gonna cry like a baby, but it's really good.
00:21:04
Speaker
Am I? I'll report back. We'll see it because I DNF. That's the one I DNF the first book. But that's because I think I just like I don't want to go on this ride because it's gonna be a long one. It is and it's also a long romantic state journey. It really yanks. I mean it there's a lot of feelings of hopelessness in it so that might be why too.
Digital vs. Physical Book Management
00:21:22
Speaker
But I just think it's really beautiful. there's ah There's a magical typewriter thing, right?
00:21:26
Speaker
Oh, I do like magical typewriter. Yes. yeah i love that. No, it's even better than that. she She misses her brother. He's been sent off to war. So she types letters and she somehow figured out that if she sticks it in the wardrobe, like if she slips it under the door of her wardrobe, that she gets response replie she gets a response. So she's been doing all this and didn't get any response. And then one day she gets a response. It's not her brother.
00:21:47
Speaker
It's not her brother. No, but see, that's what I'm saying about unusual premise. I'm like, oh. Yes. Yes. Right. Like writing leather letters and then mysteriously getting response. I like that. Right. Or that's like so good. I'll do it.
00:22:01
Speaker
Well, that's maybe not actually, but adjacent to my sounds weird. I'm going to read it which is how I ended up reading any of a number of pre pretty intense kink books i'm just like what's going on here so it's like the cross between sounds weird and the curiosity that ingrid was describing it's like i have to figure this out um but uh yeah so then i end up doing some dives and like adding but that's what i'll also do i'll add a bunch of books to my tbr as like stuff that i've collected because i've researched yeah other people are reading in this category and then i'm like okay but don't forget that you put those there because They're not tagged.
00:22:41
Speaker
But Holly, you don't have a digital list, right? Ingrid, do you keep a list or what no what do you do? No. I am more i think i'm that I'm the sweet spot between you and Holly where if I if i want to read – people can recommend it, but like unless I'm ready – like if you recommend a book and i I literally just finished a book and it just so happens to be a book that I can acquire from like Libby or Hoopla or whatever – Like it's easy to acquire. Let's say that if it's easy and and inexpensive to acquire and I just so happen to be finished a book, I might, I might do that, you know, but usually I'm, so I'm so rapid fire that it's like, you have to catch me because I'm not going to have a list. i don't have a list.
00:23:16
Speaker
It doesn't exist. I just do the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one and the next one. I will say this. I also read books that I don't – for the sake of I'm curious about it, that I don't necessarily – I'm not like this was
Impact of Book Collections on Living Spaces
00:23:28
Speaker
so good. so like when I went through the phase where I was like, please explain to me this like poly shifter thing going on. You know what i mean?
00:23:36
Speaker
That's right. You don't. And I was like, I'm so uncomfortable. Like, what is happening? But I was like, well, I got to read another one because i don't know what the heck's going on here. you know So I just kept reading it. And i was like, oh, I'm uncomfortable. Okay, where's it I need another one. You know what i mean? It was like that for a while. Yeah. Which I think neither of you guys do.
00:23:52
Speaker
No. No, not really, I suppose. But I have – yeah. So I have a huge digitalist. And then I have a huge – I have a lot of paperbacks. But I read almost exclusively digitally because – Erin, there's this picture online of this hoarder house where like literally it's splitting at the seams and it's just like piles of books. Like you can see from the exterior of the house like that the wall split and it's just like stacked floor to ceiling of books.
00:24:16
Speaker
And that's how I'm picturing your TBR right now. Well, it's not... If it were actually physically in my house, I would have... Okay, so apparently if you have a thousand books, that is considered a library.
00:24:27
Speaker
thousand books makes a library. so I definitely have that. I guess I have a library. i know, I think have a library too. But holly Holly, because she goes around all of the little free libraries in her neighborhood too, she has...
00:24:39
Speaker
no i have more books than i do yeah i have a lot of book books yeah and you know and like my husband my husband has the same problem that i do um so he also loves acquiring books and sometimes we go on dates to the bookstore together and it's a problem it's really cute but it's a problem But we just like have, ah and it's also a problem because sometimes we have overlapping taste, right? So like there are books that, you know, he'll grab from a little free library and read and I'll be like, oh, don't get rid of that one yet.
00:25:17
Speaker
I might read it someday or vice versa. Right. Someday. The last time we moved, um when we got our quote for the moving company, um I think we got two quotes, but one of them was much lower than the other. But one ah one of the movers we talked to was like, oh, yeah, um a lot of movers don't know um how but how heavy and how much space books are going to take up in the truck. So like, one guy was much lower because he didn't know he didn't properly calculate our like 10 bookshelves full of books, how he and like how many and how many boxes that was actually gonna be. Yeah, because I was like, well, we have we need more more storage for books because why would we get rid of them? And yeah, so I was telling my husband, Mr. Ingrid, that I was going to build – I was like, i I'm going to build more bookshelves in our bedroom because we need more storage space for books. And he was like, you can't build – you cannot put it on these walls because you're going crack. Like, it's going put stress on the –
00:26:20
Speaker
That's how many books I'm like trying to cram in places is that he's like, you can build a bookshelf, but it has to be on this wall or this wall because it's going to make cracks in the like joints in the walls. And he was like, you can't put one there because he just knows better. He knows going put a bookshelf there and then cram it full of books like it's, you know. Yeah.
00:26:37
Speaker
Like I'm a hamster,
Conclusion and Encouragement to Authors
00:26:39
Speaker
a gerbil. Anyway. Yeah. Well, that's all we have time for, folks. We've talked about books for ages. We have talked about books for ages. um i did like as part of this, I did want to hear about what were the things that make you guys like one click a book, just like, you know, lesbians in space for me. But it seems like who knows? Who knows? It depends on what your thing is of the day. I can shorthand. Yeah, it is. But like within all those dynamics, it always for me always is grumpy hero, right?
00:27:13
Speaker
Like grumpy hero and like button pushing heroine or partner. But I love a grumpy hero. i am. I will say that with this with the book I read recently, it's a grumpy heroine. And I liked that, too.
00:27:26
Speaker
I like it both ways. But somebody's got to be grumpy. Someone's got to be grumpy. So that's it for me. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and we lost Erin. So i guess we'll never know for Erin what it is. But we do know. We know.
00:27:40
Speaker
It's you know friends to lovers and people who need to get must. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Yeah. And she's our resident mail mail reader. yeah Like yeah when we get a minute mail mail request, I'll, you know, I'll text her about it and she'll be like, sounds dangerous.
00:27:55
Speaker
I'll take it. I'll take it. yeah um Anyway, so authors take note. That's what that's what we want. This is what the Smut Report wants. Send them to us. You can find our show notes at smutreport.com slash podcast. And until next time.
00:28:11
Speaker
Keep it smutty, folks. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Smut Report!