What’s on my reading list and how to find books to read

I find book recommendations everywhere. I think it’s like that theory the law of attraction, when something is in your consciousness, you see it everywhere. 

I find the Sunday papers little extra bit tend to have great reviews. I still love reading magazines and a lot of them will have interviews where they ask someone about the books that changed their life or what books are on their bedside table. 

The guardian app is another great resource, I’ll scroll down to the lifestyle or culture sections and there’s often an article from an author about to release a debut or the other day I read an article about a monk who has just released a book about his life. 

There’s also a few newsletters I follow including Ryan Holiday, Pandora Sykes and The Sheerluxe newsletters which often recommend books. 

I’ve even been viewing houses recently and sneakily got some ideas from peoples bedside tables. Shh. 

Finally, the best place to of course find book to read is… a book store! I could spend hours in book shops, pottering, reading snippets, picking up cute covers on the features table or slowly making my way from a to z of the fiction bookcases. 

I’ve often found myself having wonderful conversations in book stores either with fellow browsers or the book store owners who end up recommending something they think I’d like based on our chat. 

So what is currently on my to read list: 

1. Notebooks of a Wandering Monk by Matthieu Ricard. (Here’s the interview on the Guardian I read)

2. Linea Nigra by Jazmina Barrera (An essay on pregnancy and earthquakes)

3. Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris (shortlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction)

4. Norwegian Wood by Murakami (recommended to me in a book store in Sweden, can’t believe I haven’t read it yet)

5. Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be (Ryan Holiday raved about this book in his recent newsletter)

6. Babel by R.F. Kuang (I recently read Yellow Face by the same author so am intrigued to read this too)

7. Women in the Picture: What Culture Does with Female Bodies by Catherine McCormack (not sure where I first saw this recommended by keep seeing it in book stores recently)

8. Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (anything by Ann Patchett is gold and this new one sneaked up on me)