Your trust circle of reader recommenders
I think it was Kassia Krozser formerly of Booksquare who coined the phrase “circle of trust” as it relates to your book reader friends who you rely upon to give you recommendations. No reader can be without that circle. One of the reasons we have open threads like yesterday is so that readers can communicate with other readers about books they’ve been reading and what they’d recommend. For a voracious reader, the most difficult question can often be “what do I read next?”
At times I feel much like the exasperated person standing in front of his or her closet and muttering, “I have nothing to wear” even as the drawers can’t close because of all the clothes stuffed inside. Many of us have mountains of books to read, but we feel we have nothing so we turn to our friends and ask for recommendations.
And many of our friends are online ones that we’ve cultivated from message board interactions and email loops and twitter exchanges because few of us have romance reader friends in real life. I have one in real life romance reader friend but she and I have almost no overlapping circles of reading interest.
The trusted recommender is one of the most vital positions a reader can occupy. For me, Susan Scribner of the now defunct The Romance Reader was my first trusted recommender. She got me to read outside my comfort zone. Because of her wonderful and thoughtful reviews, I discovered books like Sarah Dessen’s The Truth About Forever and Sally Mandel’s Out of the Blue featuring a heroine with MS.
Shelly, from my email loop, encouraged me to read fantasy books. I read George RR Martin’s first three books, then the Tiger & Del series by Jennifer Roberson (talk about a kick ass heroine), Sharon Shinn’s Angel series, and The Belgariad series by David Eddings (which I like to refer to as the anti Martin because while there are adventures nothing bad happens to the characters I love).
Jia from Dear Author encouraged me to read the Kushiel series and NK Jeminisen’s One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.
Keishon is another favored recommender. I read Karin Slaughter and PJ Tracey’s stories based on her recommendation. And it was Keishon who got me to read The Bronze Horseman over ten years ago.
I don’t still read all of the above authors, but the books I noted above were all books that I would never have read without the reviews and fabulous interactions with other readers. Currently my trusted circle of readers is peopled by mostly romance readers. Angela James, Elyssa Patrick, and KatiD regularly influence me. Jayne is my go to for traditional historical romances. I succumbed to reading Last Hour of Gann by non stop posts from Jessica Clare.
The trust circle is so vital because we’re constantly looking for something good to read. It’s not about the money so much as it is about the time. When you devote hours to something, you want it to be great no matter if you paid $12 for it or got the book for free.
Share with us your trusted reader’s circle and what recommended books you read that you might not have found on your own.
I get almost all of my recommendations from Twitter, the DBSA podcast or here at Dear Author. My most trusted recommender is probably Elyssa Patrick. She rarely steers me wrong. Jane and I also have very similar tastes in books, though I think I tend to be a bit more forgiving of asshattery and Mary Jane heroines than she is. I also listen attentively if Mandi from Smexybooks says she thinks I’ll like a book. Generally speaking she and I have different reading tastes, but if she says a book will hit for me, I believe that and buy it.
The last serious SQUEE book that I read was The Hook-Up by Kristen Callihan. I’ve re-read it probably three or four times. It was recommended by both Jane Elyssa Patrick, though about four or five other readers chimed in to tell me I simply MUST read it. They were absolutely right. I loved it.
I don’t have any romance reading friends… online or offline. :( I’m so aloooooone!
My family doesn’t read at all. Most of my friends don’t read either… and the few books they pick up are usually super popular franchises.
I hunt down my recommendations by browsing online and seeing “reading lists” or knowing that book X is recommended to fans of book Y.
Keishon turned me on to Julia Spencer-Fleming. One of the best recommendations ever from someone I don’t know in person.
@Aly: You should think about joining Twitter. It’s a fantastic place to get recommendations. There are a number of reviewers who pimp books endlessly there.
Tori at smexy books is my go to. (see what I did there? go to…goat) snicker
but also Mandi, You, Kaetrin, Willaful, Jen Porter and mharvey also put quite a strain on my disposable income. I usually check goodreads if I find something on my own to see if anyone I trust has read it yet. I won’t buy a book if at least one of the reviewers I follow (not stalk) I trust has read it.
My trusted circle is entirely on Goodreads, which is why that is such an important community for me. My RL friends and family don’t share my tastes and thanks to my GR friends I’ve expanded my horizons considerably.
Many times reviews on DA, SBTB, Smexy Books, and several M/M review blogs will alert me to new books but I always take the book title to GR and see if my friends have read it before I make my decisions.
I never rely on reviews posted on sites like Amazon, B&N or even publisher’s websites. So many of those can be purchased by authors/publishers. The people I trust I’ve interacted with online – I know they’re real people with real opinions. Not sock puppets.
Okay, I have several people from Amazon m/m discussion board whose recommendations I trust and often enough I found good books thanks to them, but R.Parklane (those of you who read m/m probably came actoss her amazon reviews a lot) is the one whose tastes are probably coincide with mine the most. Not 100% , but in the 90s percentale for sure and I learned where we differ over the years, so usually if she recommends the book I feel very safe in buying it.
One of the many reasons I became friends with Raine is because our book tastes are so close, and even when we differ as to whether we like the subject matter, usually we never differ in whether we consider the book well-written or not. So yeah Raine :).
And the one you know is Sunita :). She may dislike the book and I may like it, but if she liked it (m/m book I mean), I am sure I will love it.
At this point, most of my friends and a lot of the Bitchery knows what I like, and they also know what they like to watch me read. These are not always the same things.
And then sometimes CarrieS says “IMMA SEND YOU A THING” and you get a package in the mail a week later that’s Beauty and the Beast analog that involves a disfigured shark-man cyborg.
I have one friend who reads romance and an entire writing group who all read science fiction and fantasy. One of the group gave me a Kindle version of THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI, by Helene Wecker, which was a wonderful fantasy set mostly in the lower East side of Manhatten in the early 20th century; it was excellent (it has a romance in it) and it’s one I would probably never have read otherwise. And my romance-reading friend got me to read ISLAND OF GHOSTS, by Gillian Bradshaw, another excellent book (historical fiction set in Roman Britain) with a romance in it. She also got me to read THE CLOUD ROADS, by Marthaa Wells, which is an unusual mix of science fiction, fantasy, and romance (aliens with magic and a love story).
I find that a lot of times when someone else loves a book, more often than not I like it rather than love it, but these three were the standouts where I agreed with the assessment.
I really don’t have any people in my life that are big readers and, aside from my nephew telling me to read Harry Potter many years ago, I get few recommendations that way. Since my life has been such havoc this year (Family members moved in and will be staying until February. These members include a toddler and starting Friday his newborn sister) I relay almost solely on book blogs for recommendations. These blogs include: DA, Smexy, Fiction Vixen, Book Pushers,SBRTB, and Fangs for the Fantasy. That is not all but looking on my feedly I realize many blogs I follow have shut down or post very infrequently now. How very sad because these blogs are so helpful to readers.
@Sylvie Fox: So happy you enjoyed JSF! You should give Dana Stabenow a try – The Liam Campbell series if you feel up to it. The first book is Fire and Ice and I think it’s free on Amazon.com. The author got the rights back and has digitized her backlist. The author has great sense of humor, romance and mystery are handled pretty similar to JSF. They do end in a cliffhanger of sorts but it’s not bad.
My author-friend Johanna Moran (“The Wives of Henry Oades”) told me I simply had to read Jon Krakauer’s book “Under the Banner of Heaven,” about fundamentalist Mormonism, and it was gripping, indeed. She also handed me a yellowed copy of Toni Morrison’s “Song of Solomon,” which I was embarrassed to admit I’d never read. Another wow.
Another friend gives me books for Christmas each year that represent her favorites from her own reading during the year. This way I’ve read a lot of books I wanted to read but hadn’t yet and many I had decided not to read (but then did when they became gifts to me), and so have had mixed experiences with them. I value the breadth brought to me by these recommendations from a dear friend. Here are only some of the titles: “Swamplandia!,” “The Round House,” “A Moveable Feast” (yes, Hemingway’s), “Wild,” “Life After Life,” “Cutting for Stone,” “Black Swan Green.”
My sister recommends now and then, most recently “A Round-Heeled Woman.” My stepmother recommended “Charms for an Easy Life,” One of my brothers, “A Fortunate Life.” Whenever a relative recommends a book to me, I enjoy it extra much (is that good grammar?).
I think my circle of trust is more about people whose tastes I know well, than about people whose tastes match mine, so I can tell whether something they liked or hated will work for me or not. And for me, what makes a good recommender (is that a real word? It should be!) is people who know how to tailor recommendations to fit a particular taste, which also takes a degree of familiarity. I guess what I’m trying to say is that all my bookish friends are useful to me. You’re welcome!
@Kati: Ha! I was reading her comment and thinking “she should join Twitter!”. Seriously, Aly, you should ;-)
Brie, that’s a good point. For me it is both, because while I know well where the tastes of the friends I trust differ from mine, we still have a big chance to agree on quite a few books. Oh, I see what you are saying – you can figure out whether the person in your circle of trust will love the book you hated and vice versa? I guess, like DA Kaetrin recently recommended the book to me which she gave a C and for me it was almost an A and she figured it out :).
I have a couple of offline rom-reading friends. One in particular has been a romance reader for much longer than I have. She’ll quite often give me a book to try and then if I like it, follow that up with a stack by the same author. When I started reading Jo Beverley’s Company of Rogues books earlier this year, she gave me a pile of her Malloren books to read. And so on. It’s pretty awesome.
Online, I don’t have many people who make specific recs for me (though I’m very grateful to the friend who gifted me Noelle Adams’ Married for Christmas because she really wanted me to read it). But I have a lot of people whose reviews I read and use to work out whether a particular book might suit me or not. I’m grateful to Sunita and Liz McC and others for recs of older romances – Mary Burchell and Betty Neels and the like. I listen to what my tweeps are saying and then track down books I might otherwise have missed.
I would really, really miss those trusted reviewers/recommenders if the online reviewing world was chilled or silenced.
I had several good friends at the defunt ADWOFF board which were in my trust circle. Nici introduced me to Kay Hooper’s Bishop series and Eve Silver’s gothic historicals. She was also the one who first mentioned Nalini Singh’s Psy/Changeling series to me, though it took a many years and several of Jane’s posts here before I finally broke down and read them all in a huge glom last year.
On occasion I will pick up a recommendation by reading book reviews in the newspaper. Mainly I follow DA, AAR and SBTB. I never would have tried so many different genres without the reviews I find on DA- you have definitely expanded and changed my reading life. Since I listen to audiobooks every time I am in the car, Lea at Speaking of Audiobboks and the GR group Romance audiobooks have very much influenced my reading and listening.
@lexxi: My trusted reviewers list is very similar to yours!
I only have one IRL friend who reads romance so I really rely on good blogger recommendations. I actually started reading romance hard-core by going through DA’s archives and trying a little bit of everything that got A/B+ reviews no matter the sub-genre. I didn’t love all of those books but there was rarely a stinker in the bunch and it was a good way to start.
Nowadays I get most of my recommendations from bloggers on twitter and have recently started finding people on goodreads with similar tastes to mine. Tori and Mandi from smexybooks are my go-to reviewers. If one loved it, it’s a really good bet. If both did then it’s a total sure thing for me. I also read pretty much anything that Jane goes nuts about and am rarely disappointed. And I have really enjoyed thoughtful reviews by Willaful and Kaetrin so I think I’m going to go add them to my feed on twitter right now.
This such a great thread, Jane!
My first Trust circle of readers was definitely The Romance Reader. I cannot recall the name of the reviewers. So many if them introduced me to the wide world of authors. I tried and discover my favorite books through them. I think i become a romance reader because the many wonderful books they recommend me to. Until now I still thank them.
I am quite lucky to have many real life friends who also read romance but we do not always love the same books. However, i discover via first on my blog and then on FB people who have the same taste and rely on their recommendation. Those groups of people are not “Professional reviewer” (I saw this word from people who support KH and justify that blogger deserve the treatment because they are not professional reviewer). They are just ordinary people who love books and like to share their love to everyone who want to listen. They do not even have blog. We just talk via FB about books. I find that the most reliable opinion of all.
Now I just discover how to effectively use twitter, I am even more excited to more trust circle of readers.
When it comes to Fantasy I have learned that if C E Murphy enjoys a book, it is likely that I will too. :) When it comes to romance, I am not certain I have specific people I trust. It is often ” 10 different people have said You have to read this!. I’ll download a sample/ buy it since it is on sale.”
IRL I trust one of my sisters for non-romance recommendations. Although our taste doesn’t match up perfectly, I can usually tell from our discussions whether the book is one that I will enjoy or not, and vice versa. I’m not on Twitter, and don’t really trust Amazon or Goodreads, so for new authors/recommendations I turn to bloggers and review sites where I’ve had good luck in the past, and where I am confident that the reviewers are trustworthy. By trustworthy I mean that the reviewer can be depended on to review the book in enough detail for me to make my own judgment, and I have faith in his or her integrity. Years ago I used to visit AAR, but haven’t really checked out the forums there in ages. I found the anti-DA sentiment rather tedious, and was reading less traditional romance anyway, so I moved on.
DA is one of the first places I check, although my tastes match better with some reviewers than with others. I always look forward to Jia’s reviews because she is such a tough grader and we tend to read in the same genres; if she likes a book, I know that it’s worth serious consideration. I read Janine, Jayne and Sunita’s reviews with a lot of interest, and have found quite a few books on their recommendations that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise read.
The Book Smugglers is a great source for YA and the place where I first heard about Andrea K. Host, one of my favorite new-to-me authors last year. After reading the review for “And All the Stars” I worked my way through Host’s entire backlist, and then pushed the books on every family member and friend who reads. I also check out Rosario’s blog because I enjoy reading her thoughts on books I may have already read, and because our tastes seem to match up fairly closely. If she reviews a book or series I haven’t read, and likes it, I know I have a good chance of liking it as well.
I could go on and on, but won’t. As I think about bloggers/reviewers who are part of my “circle of trust” the thing that really strikes me is how many there are, and how many blogs I visit daily or almost-daily, and trust for well-written reviews, rational discussion (which I confess that I mostly read but seldom participate in), and thoughtful commentary on current events in the world of books. So many. Thank you to all of the wonderful women who enrich the online community with their reviews, their commentary, and their presence. These last few weeks have been profoundly depressing to me what with the EC/DA lawsuit, and the Kathleen Hale fiasco. It’s wonderful to be reminded of the good things about interacting online with other book lovers. A big thank you to Jane and all the DA reviewers and commenters for casting some light out into what sometimes seems like a bit too much internet darkness.
My trusted circle at Goodreads is a great source, including Mandi and Tori from Smexybooks, Has from Bookpushers and Penny Watson. KatiD has given me some good recommendations also. These are all people I have known for many years since I started commenting on blogs and started my own blog.
I pretty much let a lot of romance readers influence me especially if they really loved a certain book. However, I am a very picky reader. Here at DA, all of you guys are pretty influential. My go to readers: Sunita – for all things m/m, historical and mystery. I remember Jane got me to read a bunch of Anya Bast stuff and they were so so good. I remember them because often I would go back and reread them. Pretty sure there were some other writers, too, but Bast was the best of the bunch. Linda Mowry, from the now defunct, TRR, was my reading twin when it came to series romance. All her recs worked for me.
I do read mysteries now. I sort of progressed to that point but I still love romance. One of the best recommendations this year came from Mike Cane for a set of British mysteries I read, set during the Thatcher years, that were written by Derek Raymond. They were the most gripping stories I’ve ever read.
He also recommended Brazilian writer, Patricia Melo, and she had one book available digitally, Lost, and I literally inhaled that book as well. So, he’s a pretty good source for book/author recs.
Twitter is a wonderful place to get book recs and to interact with other readers. Blogs are still great, too. There is an advantage to having a circle of people you trust to point out good books to you. I value their opinions and appreciate them.
My trusted circle at Goodreads is a great source, including Mandi and Tori from Smexybooks, Has from Bookpushers, Jen from That’s What I’m Talking about and Penny Watson. KatiD has given me some good recommendations also. These are all people I have known for many years since I started commenting on blogs and started my own blog.
Most of the people in my trusted circle are at Goodreads – which is how the site still has a hold on me. I am a part of a great romance group and a great fantasy group. Between those two groups and my GR friends, I have more recs than I can read. Which is a good thing (except for my wallet).
Most of my life, no-one I knew read as much as me, and since I read mostly SFF, kindred minds were/are few and far between. So, I did the next best thing: I subscribed to Publishers (who publish only SFF) Newsletters, and that way I kept up with the new releases and what they were all about.
Over the last 10 or so years I’ve latched onto e-publishers of erotic romance, so I get those Newsletters as well :) I must admit since joining GR four years ago, I have found some like-minded people in a number of groups I belong to; but since they are (what I call) ‘minority’ genres [ok, M/M is growing fast!] there’s only a handful of people who have latched on to what I like and who are prepared to recommend a new author. (Yes, I’m particular about my authors :) )
And, of course, there are the book-bloggers. My main ones are Michelle at Top2Bottom Reviews (tho’ I think she is considering closing); Bookie Nookie Reviews :D ; and Smart Bitches Trashy Books. Some others occasionally grab my attention.
So, there’s no-one IRL for me; and I thank goodness for the Internet! (Gulp: never thought I’d say that one!!)
This is another great thread! I didn’t know anyone reading romance when I first started getting into it and it was pretty much ARR and TRR back in those days. The DIK reviews and “If You Like…” lists on AAR were particularly helpful when I got started.
Now I rely on DA and SBTB and book blogs I’ve found through these two. I’ve actually found a number of great reads just from comment threads like these. Sarah Mayberry and Julie James are now auto buys for me not just because of their favorable reviews but because of the lively discussion their books tend to generate. I can’t imagine not having found the fabulous Susanna Kearsley who DA definitely convinced me to try.
I don’t pay any attention to author quotes on cover blurbs but favorite authors tweeting or posting about books will catch my eye. I tried the wonderful Grace Draven because of a post here at DA followed by a recommend by Ilona Andrews. And Nalini Singh along with Jane and others can’t seem to say enough good things about Sonali Devi’s A Bollywood Affair which I can’t wait to read.
I’m trying to grow my circle of trust by converting my friends to romance. It’s worked with two!! Right now I’m the book pusher, but hoping that will change… I also love romance blogs, but the DBSA podcast is probably the single most source that will cause me to empty my wallet. Hearing the excitement in their voices has made me give books way outside my comfort zone a chance!
I agree with @Brie that a key part of trusting a recommender is knowing their taste well enough to know where they overlap with mine. Another key for me is that I need to feel comfortable disliking something that someone recommends to me in order to consider them truly trustworthy. Sometimes trading recommendations just feels too fraught, especially with people who treat it as a test (if you like such and such book, you’re worthy of my respect type thing) or a validation (if you like me, you’ll like my favorite author). I’ve encountered people like that IRL, and also online at some of the more squee based blogs. I find “I liked this more/less than you did” type comments on reviews to be very helpful and if a reviewer or blogger doesn’t seem open to those comments, I don’t trust them as much.
IRL, I’m related to a lot of readers and we have varying areas of overlap. Generally, if my brother gives me a book, I assume I’ll like it because he knows my tastes so well – he gave me The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz for Christmas one year and I was so, so skeptical (I don’t like a lot of contemp lit fic and this looked liked the worst kind of pretentious lit fic), but I ended up loving it.
In my 20s, I was lucky enough to have a roommate who also loved to read and whose taste overlapped mine, so we basically used each other as personal lending libraries. She had a family friend who was an sf/f author and would send the occasional care package of paperbacks and that was lovely. I discovered Charles de Lint, Janet Kagan, Robin McKinley and many other sf/f authors through her.
I don’t have any online friends who directly recommend books to me, but I have several reviewers on my trust list – reviewers whose tastes overlap with mine and whose tastes I understand well enough to evaluate a review. They include CarrieS at SBTB, and at DA, Sunita, Kaetrin, and Jane – they have the most overlap, although I think I’ve tried books based on almost all of the DA reviewers. Sunita introduced me to the gay detective sub-genre. SarahF made me curious about mm. And Jayne convinced me to try Jeannie Lin with her review of Capturing the Silken Thief. Jane introduced me to Sarah Mayberry and Sarina Bowen. Once I figured out that Jane has a much higher tolerance for alphahole heroes than I do, I could filter her reviews accordingly.
CarrieS on SBTB has pointed me to books that I’ve loved and would never have found on my own – The Stolen Luck by Shawna Reppert is the one I can think of, but I know there are others. She and I have different deal breakers, but generally, if CarrieS likes it, I know that I will like it, if not love it. SarahF at DA was one of the first reviewers where I felt like I really had a good sense of her taste – she introduced me to several autobuy authors – Marie Sexton, Heidi Cullinan and K A Mitchell. The thing I loved about her reviews is that she was so clear about her taste so I could tell where we overlapped and where we didn’t.
My Mom is the only romance book friend I have, but we like different things. In the past I mostly read Regency romances, so I have to say my book life has been seriously enriched these past five years from reading reviews and comment threads at DA, AAR and SBTB.
I love “Whatcha Reading” and “If You LIke” posts best of all. I never really had much of a TBR shelf until I started visiting reader sites….now it’s out of control.
I may have never ventured to read Ilona Andrews, Nalini Singh or Thea Harrison if not for the enthusiasm of reader recs in the threads. And let me tell you I am a crazy fangirl for all them! I’ve read so many books out of my comfort zone because of this community and what a blessing its been.
My most trusted recommender is my friend Vi. I can’t count how many fantastic books she’s recommended to me. She’s turned me on to Nalini Singh – who is now my favorite- and more recently Sarina Bowen (loved) and The Hook Up which was excellent.
I also trust recommendations from Elyssa Patrick. When I am bored with most of what I have she usually has some recs for books I haven’t heard of before. She’s given me some cracktastic recs that I ended up loving.
I like getting on twitter in general for book recommendations.
No surprise, Jane is in my trust circle. When I said I want to read more girl athlete heroines in YA, she recced Miranda Kenneally. I also found Tammara Webber and Katie McGarry through her.
It’s completely Jessica Clare’s fault that I discovered R. Lee Smith.
When it comes to SFF, that’s a tougher question. I’m in the trust circle for many offline friends who are SFF readers but because I’m notoriously picky (LOL), their recs tend to fall flat for me. I’m probably the most adventurous reader among my friends in terms of actively seeking new and upcoming writers, so that’s tough. Right now, I kind of rely on other internet friends to guide me there.
I don’t have any romance reader friends in my life, so I really depend on Dear Author, SBTB, and Smexybooks for most of my recommendations. I follow a lot of people on Twitter, and I’ve found a number of great books that way. Lastly, favorite authors sometimes recommend books that interest me. But really without sites like this, I wouldn’t have read 1/3 of the books I have. I check in everyday, and often “one-click” just from someone’s suggestions through a review or a comment. These sites are my virtual book friends:)
I love following blogs that leave wonderful, impartial reviews. I find that even if a book gets a negative review I may still pick it up because the review may mention things that work for me but not the reviewer. Fave blogs now are DA, SBTB, Fiction Vixen, Smexy. They’re my go to blogs. Also, I tend to lurk on Twitter for some of my fave authors and find lots of great rec’s there. I tend to not listen to friends as most of them dislike romance and are into lit fic. They know not to rec a book to me that doesn’t have an uplifting message or resolution so we tend not to trade books.
@ Kim, I just noticed your comment that went up close to mine is very similar! We must have been typing together. :). :).
My book friends on Twitter are definitely my go-to people when it comes to romance recommendations. There are three or four in particular whose suggestions I always take seriously, even if we have not always shared similar tastes.
I definitely rely on the women of DA and a few blogs that generally review books I end up loving (Smexy, bookpushers).
I work in a library and still have zero real life book friends because none of my coworkers are romance readers (and in fact, are the snobby, romance is bad type readers) so I cannot rely on any of them. If I didn’t have the online romance community to participate in (even as just a reader of comments and book suggestions), I would have been lost, particularly when digital books began to take over my romance reading. I used to be a voracious YA reader so my trusted twitter friends also helped with that, but I’ve become disenchanted and just tired of YA in general so that has slacked off.
My trusted reading circle is pretty small. Holly and Ames are usually the ones emailing me and saying, “You have to read this” and even though it might take me years to get to them, I usually love the books they tell me to read.
@Aly: Kati and Brie have the right of it. Join Twitter and you will make all kinds of friends. You won’t be alone anymore. :)
I also read a lot of blogs and there have been a lot of books that I bought because of reviews I’ve read here and other blogs like this one.
@Milly: Ha! I rarely have good timing. It’s about time!:)
I haven’t been reading a lot of romance (or anything else at all) lately, but typically I know that if Rosario at rosario.blogspot.com enjoys a book, I’ll probably like it, too.
(I don’t think that always goes the other way, though — for example, I kind of love love LOVE a lot of HPs and she has less tolerance for the over-the-top ones that I’ve enjoyed.)
Here at DA, I know my tastes run closer to Jane’s than to other reviewers’ tastes, but I fall in alignment with a couple of others often enough that I’ll pay special attention to their really good grades (or bad ones). Mrs. Giggles’ reviews/grades don’t always match mine but I can almost always pick out what’s going to bother me about a book (or what won’t bother me) from her reviews.
But I also pick up a lot of books just by looking through my updates on Goodreads. I don’t know that I’d call all of them trusted reviewers or that I’d always follow their recommendations — and I know many of their tastes don’t match mine — but I buy a lot of books based on tropes (I love a good blackmail and I’m a sucker for anything related to P&P) so the high volume there and the comments from readers (sometimes enthusiastic and sometimes horrified — negative reviews really can sell books) end up putting a huge dent in my wallet.
What a nice surprise to read your column and see my name mentioned! I’m glad that I was able to help you read outside your comfort zone, and honored to have played a part at The Romance Reader for approximately 10 years. These days I am a faithful DA follower, which has led me outside my comfort zone to m/m romance and introduced me to new authors like Sarah Mayberry. It’s all the great circle of book life, I guess.
Susan Scribner
My dear friend Carolyn has forced me out of my reading hole a million times and 90 out of 100 I’ve been delighted.
I follow Jane’s recommendations a lot and Jill Myles/Jessica Clare. If she calls something brilliant, I know it’s going to be a game changer.
I rely on DA, SBTB and Twitter. Over time I realized that whatever Dabney Grinnan enjoys, the chances are at least 85% that it’s a book for me. KristieJ and Wendy the Super Librarian got me to read Westerns, and an author I know has convinced me to read some titles that were iffy for me (and she called them correctly).
@Lori: “I follow Jane’s recommendations a lot and Jill Myles/Jessica Clare. If she calls something brilliant, I know it’s going to be a game changer.”
I usually use the all-caps test for Jill’s reviews. If she has anything in all-caps, I know that I might really love it or I might be totally freaked out by it and spend the whole book going “WTF IS THIS?” but I probably won’t be bored. :-D
I signed up for Twitter because Lauren Dane who I discovered after reading the Cherished anthology with Maya Banks posted she interacted more there. Twitter introduced me to so many new authors and bloggers it was overwhelming at first. I’ve really come to rely on Elyssa Patrick, Jen and Angela from Fiction Vixen, Mandi from Smexybooks, DA bloggers, Stephanie from Book-A-Holic Anon, J9 at Book Vixen, SBC, Kindle Gal and UTC for excellent recommendations. I generally tend to follow these same people on Facebook and Goodreads.
I rely on my mom to recommend mysteries (which means I am also relying on her trust circle). Although the latest one I read on her recommendation I actually couldn’t stand and ended up DNFing it. .. She sometimes has MUCH gorier taste than I do, believe it or not.
I began reading category romances as a teen, and then classic bodice rippers. Basically, I would grab anything I could get my hands on at the library. I would hide them from my mom who views romances as very “low brow” and anti-feminist and not worthy of my attention. So I had no community at that point and therefore no “trust circle”.
Then I went for years without ever picking up a romance. When I got my kindle, I realized just how inexpensive and accessible romance actually is now. I went a little crazy.
Now, I rely on blogs such as this one, SBTB, Fiction Vixen, Smexy, The Book Pushers and a couple of others. I have gotten used to identifying which reviewers will generally share my tastes. When I first found SBTB through a random google search looking for romance novel recommendations, I must have spent about three straight days reading the archives. Same with this blog!
So I have to say that I view these blogs as my “trust circle” because I still don’t know any other romance readers IRL. I have read m/m romance and paranormal romance largely as a result of the reviews I read here.
Because this is my “trust circle” I am enraged and horrified at the possibility that the recent craziness in the blogging/reviewing community could create a “chill” on the kind of open, frank discussion of books that I depend on.
Sirius on the Amazon M/M discussion group is awesome. :-) For the most part, I just like to read actual reviews instead of shill crap. I don’t really keep track of whose tastes match mine because mine can be pretty quirky and changeable, and also I am not that organized. So on Goodreads, I mostly look at reviews by people who are my friends. Booklikes is the same. The Amazon group is all real people saying what they really think.
lots of my friends read and while i’m always telling them about books/authors, rarely do they rec books to me. therefore, i follow many authors on FB, twitter & GR. after all, most of them are readers, too. also, logically or not, if i like an author, their voice, etc., i assume that i’ll also like what they like to read. i also like to check out the reviews on many blogging sites as well as RT recs. and finally, since lots of what i read comes from my library, i’ll check out the “recommended for you” links that show up when i click on a book.
Trusted recommenders. I think there have been too many over the years to list them all. Before the days of blogs and goodreads reviews, I had a habit of asking people with similar tastes to mine to trade recommendations. Sometimes I’d even ask them to email me, and that was how I met at least a couple of really good friends. Since the advent of blogs, I pay attention to some of them very carefully.
My first trusted recommender in the online romance community was Tanya who only rarely posts here. I remember that I popped up on the old AAR boards (this was 15 years ago) and said I was a reader who loved Laura Kinsale, Patricia Gaffney, and Judith Ivory’s books, and she introduced me to Connie Brockway’s All Through the Night, which was really different and good.
Sometimes I overlap with someone in one genre but not in another. For example, Jennie and I are often on the same page about historical romances, but I’m not as keen on the other genres she likes. And I have a friend IRL who has turned me on to some great fantasy novels, but whose taste in romance isn’t quite the same as mine (She loves Jayne Ann Krentz / Amanda Quick and reads her almost exclusively among romance authors. While I really enjoyed this author’s books at one time, they’re too similar to each other for me now).
In addition to trusted recommenders, there are people whose reviews can sell me on a book really fast. Jane is one and Sarah F., when she reviewed here, was another. Their recommendations don’t always work for me, but their reviews do. Contemporary romance is not my favorite subgenre, so the fact that there are 193 books in the “Contemporary Romance” folder on my kindle is a statement to the power of word of mouth.
Over the years I’ve had some great recommendations from readers at a private Yahoo group, but I won’t name them here. Among those who review or reviewed publicly, I love the Book Smugglers for YA, fantasy and SF recommendations. On Twitter Erin Satie and Jorrie Spencer have been good recommenders for me. I also really appreciate some of the same books that LizMc2 highlights on her blog. There are others, but I’ll stop here.
I am enjoying these discussions so much–thanks for this idea!
I am kind of weird, maybe, in that I really enjoy reviews as an art form in their own right, so I read a lot of them not looking for recommendations at all but just for interesting book conversation. So I have a “reviewer trust circle”–people I trust not necessarily to talk about books that will work for me, but to talk about books in honest and interesting ways. Outside of DA, that is mostly one-person blogs, because I like strong individual voices (some of my favorites are Miss Bates, Kaetrin, Willaful, Rosario and SuperWendy, and I have less romance-focused ones as well). *Because* I trust these reviewers to be honest and thoughtful, sometimes they’ll get me to try something that isn’t usually “my thing”–like Jane’s review of Lia Silver’s PRISONER, and Jane, Jayne and Wendy getting me to try category romances years ago (which I now love).
Then I have my “reader family”–it’s like a reader twin, but we don’t share as much DNA. Those are people I have a pretty big taste overlap with, and whose taste I know well enough to make good guesses about when I will like the same books they did. THOSE people lighten my wallet, and I think my closest reader family members right now are Sunita, Rosario (I would never be reading Paul Kingsnorth’s amazing THE WAKE if not for her), and @dougalgodfrey on Twitter. There are lots of other more distant “cousins” whose reviews/recommendations often work for me (right back at you, Janine!) but with whom I don’t overlap as much.
Since I’m a cheapskate, I get a lot of books via DA’s daily deals list, and find the bits of commentary in the posting itself and reader comments helpful in making the decision to click over and try a sample.
For romance, DA is my trusted circle. I just bought and am loving Liesmith by Alis Franklin even though the review here was lukewarm. See…not-so-great reviews do sell books!
For other genres, particularly YA, Goodreads is my circle.
I’m lucky in that my best friend is a romance reader. Our tastes tend not to overlap (she loves alpha-holes and people with traumatic pasts way more than I do), but knowing her so well makes it easy to have the “I read this book and you would like it”, or the “I read this book but it’s probably not your thing” conversations. Aside from that, I really love Twitter as a source of book recs. Right now I’m reading Jenn Bennett’s Kindling the Moon because Donna Herren, one of the writers behind Kit Rocha, raved about it so much on Twitter, and I know she’s usually a fairly hard sell, so I really wanted to try it, and I’m so glad I did. I’ve also had fun bookish chats with people like Hapax, and E from the Book Pushers, who have steered me toward books that I ended up liking. As for blogs, Rosario and I have a lot of reading tastes in common, and I’ve been paying attention a lot recently to Willaful and Sunita’s reviews in particular.
My best friend, Hel, has been my trusted resource for all things romance. She got me started reading romance in the first place and she is never wrong when she says I’ll enjoy a book/series.
My little brother and sister are also trusted resources – though from them I mostly get sci-fi/fantasy or manga recommendations.
I’m only just getting to know the awesome bloggers on Twitter and FB over the past couple of years and I’ve got a bunch of titles on my TBR thanks to Dear Author, That’s What I’m Talking About, Joyfully Reviewed, Wicked Little Pixie, and many others. I’m learning which bloggers have similar taste to mine and that could take a while, but in the meantime, I appreciate their variety of opinions.
I don’t have any real life friends who are romance readers, but I started out by following a few authors that I liked on twitter and gradually built a community of people that I interact with on twitter, facebook and goodreads. These include authors, bloggers and like minded readers. It’s been a fabulous way to learn about new authors and discuss books that I like and love with people of the same interests. I definitely get recommendations from them and from blogs like this one, The Bookish Babe, Harlequin Junkie and SBTB. Because of these interactions I have been introduced to such authors as Cara McKenna, Jackie Ashenden, Amy Jo Cousins, Noelle Adams, Erica Monroe and Sarina Bowen, just to name a few. I doubt that I would have found them on my own, and certainly without the invention of digital books.
Rosario is my go-to reviewer – if she gives something an A grade, I’ll pretty much buy it, and I’ll consider anything she is enthusiastic about (which currently is half of the Man Booker Prize – I don’t know where I’m going to get the time.)
Janine is my best match at DA – I’ll always look at anything she has enjoyed. Lightreads on Dreamwidth – from time to time she reviews something I haven’t come across anywhere else.
And various programmes on Radio 4 – I especially like A Good Read where 2 people and the host each pick a favourite book and they all read all 3 books and chat about them.
My trusted circle consists of my best friend (who doesn’t read romance – yet..!), SBTB, DA, The Book Smugglers, some Goodreads reviewers, a few authors on Twitter, and a few more blogs I’ll check in on occasionally. And so inside this circle, whenever someone’s squeeing about a book they just read or talking about their favorite books – I will listen. This includes the comments sections of course. So for example, when Jane gave the money back guarantee for the Sarina Bowen book I just HAD to try it. I LOVE the series, so thank you for that! And it was the “read this NOW” review of Courtney Milan’s The Duchess War at SBTB that got me hooked on Milan’s books.
So I don’t really have anyone whose taste is a close-to-perfect match with mine, but I will say this: when a book gets a 10 from The Book Smugglers, I’ll go buy it immediately. And I’ll probably throw in a few more books just to celebrate.
Oh and btw, I just added The Hook Up by Kristen Callihan to my TBR. The comments here (and on the Open Thread post) finally convinced me it’s the right thing to read after the awesome Ivy League series. I’ve been so confused, since it’s a new genre for me I have no idea where to look for recommendations.
I came back to romance about 5 yrs ago after a twenty year absence. I started on AAR which was a treasure. I remember printing out a top 100 romances of all time list and crossing out books as I read them. I lurked on AAR for about 3 years, also subscribing to RT Times. Then my whole world opened when I discovered DA (which I follow daily) and Twitter. Jane introduced me to the Last Hour of Gann. Then through Jane I met Mistress M of SMbookObsessions on Twitter and we bonded over our mutual love of Laurann Dohner. Mistress L and Eagle rock too! I get so many great recs from Twitter, and talk so much about books, I’m rarely on GR anymore-JenniferRNN, Mandi, Kaetrin, Angela James…. Oh God there’s many more and I’m forgetting names. I feel terrible. On Twitter I’m bonding with fellow rom lovers from all over the country and world. It’s fabulous.
Before I fell into my epic reading slump, I used to follow a number of bloggers and readers in the m/m romance community for whom I had a lot of respect, including Jenre, Kassa, Emmy and several of the reviewers at Jessewave. Many don’t blog anymore due to RL as well as too many kerfuffles in the community; the latter being one of the reasons why I no longer blog/review or participate at GR. Although some others have been established since, I still really feel the loss of those people.
I tend now to focus on the body of reviews – if that makes sense – as opposed to ratings and recommendations that I come across when scrolling through my feed and through Twitter. Finding that gel/connection with another reader’s POV helps me a lot when it comes to choosing a book, not to mention trusted authors themselves.
Poor Sarah Wendell, I didn’t even mention her! LOVE those DBSA podcasts. I was listening to the Nalini Singh interview while driving to work this morning. :) Thanks for all the laughs Sarah and Jane!
What a fun topic! I often feel like a bit of a magpie or something, choosing different shiny books from quite different reviewers. I don’t really have one or two people whose recs are an automatic yes for me, but there are so many reviewers I appreciate pointing me in certain directions.
Back in the day, I know Jane and Jayne here got me hooked on Jo Goodman historicals and Laura Griffin’s RS. I’ve always had good luck when Sunita is recommending m/m or Janine is recommending fantasy or romantic fantasy. But that doesn’t necessarily broaden out to all subgenres.
I also get quite curious once a book hits a certain level of buzz (as long as I don’t think it’s manufactured), and that has led me to try books I might not have otherwise, be it Easy by Tammara Webber, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn or Heartsick by Chelsea Cain (thanks, Keishon!)
And even when I decide a book is not for me, I can still thoroughly enjoy reading a review for itself. I love book talk. My most recent influence was Rosario in her discussion of the Man Booker prize, and especially We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves.
Still recovering from Reviews by Jessewave closing down. Nothing has quite replaced her crowd of reviewers. Come to DA, SBTB, and All Things Urban Fantasy, but my real source is the talk over on Paperbackswap.
Twitter is my biggest trust circle, because.. these days, that’s where 98% of my one-clicks come from. People within that? Brie, Kaetrin, Willaful, Vi_Dao, Has & Lou from the Bookpushers… @__Marijana @dougalgodfrey & @janetnorcal – ( I have stopped w/ the PNR books but my blogmate Stephanie has rec’d some really good books) but ALL OF TWITTER in a nutshell. You all are bad for my wallet :)
@Liz Mc2: That’s how I read reviews: book conversation.
I’m a cranky, stubborn reader whose tastes are unpredictable, so my circle is ever changing. That said, DA’s own Janine has often piqued my interest. I’m not into the heavy fantasy she enjoys, but she turned me on to Sharon Shinn, of whom I’ve been a fan from the first book I tried!
I’m very similar in thinking to Liz Mc2 in that I like to read reviews, see what others are reading and loving (or loathing) and observing the ensuing discussion. That being said my trust circle includes Lynn from AAR – she likes historical westerns, category romance and Harlequin Historicals. We might have been separated at birth.
I reviewed for The Romance Reader from 1999 to 2007 and there were many, many wonderful reviewers over there, none of whom ever steered me wrong – but I naturally gravitated towards Susan, Linda and Lesley Lawrence.
Rosario is a gem – a bloody gem! – to the community. She’s been blogging for eons and reads such a great variety. I think we agree more than we disagree, but she always articulates her opinions so well in her reviews that I’ve never had a “Well she’s totally WRONG” moment with her. When we disagree I still totally “get” where she’s coming from.
KristieJ just because she’s so frickin’ genuine in her enthusiasm. Seriously, I keep her in my trust network even though I slapped C grades on two of her all-time favorite books. We tend to agree a lot on the books we “liked.” The B reads. When it comes to books that one of us LOVED is where it’s stickier. Kristie is very hero oriented (and the more wounded they are, the better) and I’m All About The Heroine. So usually when we disagree, it comes down to that fundamental difference. But we know that about each other and love each other anyway.
I too get most of my book recs from Twitter these days. A lot of the time that’s because my friends are tweeting about them well before the reviews go up. I’m kind of a dabbler in romance – I’ll like a bit of this and a bit of that – Brie is reliable for contemporary recommendations for me (and Has and Lou and Ericka and Jane and Ronnie and Claudia and Kat and Mandi and Tori and and) and Jayne is reliable for historicals, Merrian is great for SFF (so is Growly Cub and others I’ve already mentioned). I get recs from all the reviewers here at DA and my first m/m was because of a Sarah Frantz review here. As Brie was saying above, after a while, with honest reviewers, you can work out the “code” – this is a thing that she liked but I won’t like because x but this thing she liked I know I’ll like because y. And this thing she really hated is my catnip. I expect I’ve accepted a book rec (and been happy with it) from just about everybody I interact with online – because that’s a big part of why I’m on Twitter and also because I’m easy.
I also regularly get recs from my daily digest from Goodreads – particularly for m/m – some of my friends there are really reliable for me but they’re not on Twitter (sadness!).
@Aly: Sharing book love on Twitter is one of my very favourite things to do. You should join! It’s so much fun. :D
@P. Kirby: That was the book Sirius was talking about! :) I liked it but found the mythology hard to follow. I emailed Sirius and said I thought she’d like it much more than I did because I think she’s more adventurous in her reading in some ways than me – if we were going down a waterslide, I think Sirius would put her hands in the air and I’d be the one clinging to the sides! LOL
I love these discussions. Love.
There are several Tweeps I trust to recommend books to me, and several of them are also here on DA. It’s not so much the reviews, though those help, as the discussions *around* the reviews that let me know whether I will like a book. These are things I don’t get from the typical “Amazon review” or “GoodReads review.” It’s not just that the quality of the reviews here and at SBTB and on Twitter is better, it’s that there’s an active community discussion.
Yesterday I downloaded a book by a new-to-me author because it was recommended by Bea on BeasBookNook and on Twitter.