With the beginning of the new session and in a place, already over-flooded with books, writers, readers and varied interests of people. It is a task of extreme importance to chose the right book!
Before pointing out, ways of choosing a right book. First consider, what a right book is..? Is it a book kept on the right side of shelf?, or the book with title ‘Right’? Probably not!
A right book, is usually defines as the one which simply serves the purpose of reading or considering the
book! But is that the only criteria..?
Have a look!
So, things to be kept in mind before choosing a right book are as follows:
• Purpose: The foremost idea of choosing a book, takes place with the purpose itself! So, the first thing to be considered while choosing a right book is “Whether it serves the purpose, or not?”. One needs to be clear about the purpose of reading the book only then it will be possible to determine whether the book serves the purpose or not!
But what if the purpose is to just read any book in leisure time? In that case, question yourself the
following things:
• What genre of books do you like? Sci-fi, adventure, mystery, non-fiction, fiction, realistic fiction?
• What authors do you like? Research books by authors you’ve enjoyed in the past. Chances are they’ll have another publication that you’ll also enjoy, and by searching by authors, you can get more of the same types of books that the author wrote.
• Is there a type of book, or a specific book you would like to try? If there is, search the book up and read
its summary. That will help you decide if the book is right for you.
• Are there any books in a certain series you would like to read? If you know the series then you can search the series online and you can find the books. You can also go to the library and see if they have the series that you are looking for.
• What are your interests? Insert your hobbies into your library catalog search!
With these set of questions ready, one will easily be able to decide the book to be read in leisure time.
• Descriptions: The next thing to be kept in mind while choosing the right book is its ‘description’..
Descriptions can often be quite deceiving about the quality of the book and are mostly just cliffhangers
that entice you into picking up the book. Though, they help in finding out if the book is your cup of tea,
but they shouldn’t be used as the sole determining factor while deciding if you should read it or not.
• Book Reviews: Reviews usually comprises of comments on how well the book measures up to
expectations based on the specifications provided by the author. It talks about performance, reliability, defects, if any, and value for money.
Reviews, also called ‘word of mouth’ and ‘user generated content’ differs from ‘marketer generated content’ in its evaluation from consumer’s or user’s point of view. Thus, book reviews is nice option to rely upon as it is mostly given by the readers.
• Best- Sellers: Best-sellers are not necessarily the best for you! Many people refer to the best sellers list
to get an idea of what they should be reading. Or sometimes they’ll just choose something at random, pick up a book and hope for the best. That’s fine for entertainment purposes, but not so much for your development.
• Conscious decision: It would better benefit us if we took the time to consciously choose what to read
based on the skills we want to improve, or the mindset that we want to hone. If we don’t make that choice for ourselves, then the best sellers list will make the choice for us.
• Recommendations: Ask for recommendations from like-minded people and your role models.
Since they have similar taste, you can trust their review of a book without having to do much research yourself. They won’t try to sell you like the marketers who promote the books on the best sellers list.
They have your best interests in mind and know your personality, so they’d have a good idea of what you like.
• Cover: Book covers have become vitally important as the book industry has become commercially competitive. Covers now give detailed hints about the style, genre and subject of the book, while many push design to its limit in the hope of attracting sales attention. Well, this reminds me of a famous quote, “Never judge a book by its cover!” In my opinion, a book can be judged by its cover but not
always as they are designed to attract the readers and at times may give a false image about the book.
• Cost: It has been a misconception usually amongst students and youngsters that, ‘The higher the cost is, the better is the quality!’ In terms of Book, the rule both by and large DOES NOT apply! Sometimes, books that are costly serves no relevant content to its readers whereas cheap and short books are
interesting to read!
