This week’s topic comes to us from Pippen @ THE PIGEON who asks:
Prompts: How current is your reading? Do you tend to read recently published books or pick from the publishing backlog, and why? Is there any particular merit to keeping up with current releases, or is it all hype? How has book blogging changed your habits on this front? And, in the future, are you thinking you want your reading to shift either way?
I am a little obsessed with monitoring book releases. I read all the lists I can find (“Ten Books You Shouldn’t Miss This Summer” “Beach Reads For Every Reader” “Best Books You’ve Overlooked This Year”…like that). So, I usually have a very good idea of what is coming out, what is new, what is popular.
However, as a library reader, it’s pretty rare that I actually read a book within three months of its release. I just can’t afford it. Right now, I have 45 books on hold at various libraries, many of them holds that I placed before the book was released. I‘m just over here, patiently waiting my turn.
As far as backlist titles go, I do read some, when I get a rec, or stumble on them.
And the blog informs these choices in a couple ways. One, I like to make sure that I have at least one good, quasi-current book to review each week, and two, I get more recs from Top Ten Tuesday than I can possibly ever read. If this blog has taught me anything, it’s that I will die with an impossibly long TBR. Hopefully in 35 years or so, but still.
What about you, dear readers? New releases or backlist titles? I’ll take your confessions in the comments.
The Let’s Talk Bookish meme is hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books & Dani @ Literary Lion.
fifty-two 
I like a mix, it’s nice to be able to chat with other bloggers about a book and that usually will be a new release. However, I also enjoy reading/discovering older releases.
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PS – I loved reading your thoughts on this!
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I guess for me it’s mostly (italicizes mostly) newer releases, but I do sprinkle some backlist stuff in as well. Oh, and the older sci- fi I come up with from time to time. But same here… I’m not really good at staying up on Netgalley and upcoming releases, but there are a few blogs that keep me kinda up to date and thank God for them! :):)
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I’ve definitely become better at learning about new and upcoming titles but I tend to not get too caught up in them because then my TBR will really be overwhelming (more so than it already is lol)! 🙃 I also sadly don’t have access to libraries and the FOMO feeling I get when I want to buy a new book that everyone’s talking about but can’t really isn’t my fave! 😂
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I think a moderate majority of backlist – but most of that seems to be shallow backlist, concentrated in the up to 6-7 years back.
Now, there are definitely series where I’ll try to grab the new book as soon as it’s available (though that’s often “as soon as its available from the library”) because I’m impatient to see how the story progresses. And one I spend way too much time chatting about online; and so need to be fairly current or I end up having to avoid vast swaths of threads and discussions to avoid spoilers (and because I lack the basis to contribute).
But I haven’t yet hit the point where those series get new books as fast as I can read them, so there are plenty of older books to read. (And I’ve got hundreds of them already on my want to read list. That list does seem to grow faster than I can read, as I get recommendations for books or authors and stick them on there until I get a chance to try them out)
Still at a rough guess, eyeballing my Goodread publication year stats page, its maybe 40% new, 60% backlist. But you can definitely see a quite solid line near the top sloping up to the right from all the current year books I do read. (But I’m always amused that I can easily see on that graph when I blew through some older backlist series. For example, back in July I reread most of the Discworld Night Watch sub-series and that made a steep little dotted line from ’89 – ’02)
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I want to read more “current” books, but I haven’t found the balance. Like you, most of my books come from the library. Maybe I can try balancing new releases and my long long TBR list somehow. Maybe I should join a new release book challenge.
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I’m in the process of mapping out what I want my reading to look like in 2022, and new book challenges, and non-fiction challenges are part of that, I think.
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