How exactly is it that we discover what book we're going to read next?

I always find it astounding when I hear from someone that they a) aren't reading anything at the moment, or b) can't find any books that look worth reading. For me, the problem has never been a lack of something to read. Instead, I'm always struggling with too much to read, with a list of books I want to get to that grows much faster than I can read them. I know that this has been a problem since I started reading for enjoyment, and it got me thinking about just how I picked my next book has changed over the years.

During my earliest years as a reader, I know most of my choices were directed from on high by parents and teachers. Luckily, I remember the young adult books I read for school - stories from Roald Dahl, Gary Paulsen, E.B. White and others - as being far more enjoyable than some of the classics I read in later grades. My first experience with both autonomous book choices and recommendations from my peers was the yearly Scholastic book fair. I'm sure I'm not the only one on Murmur that remembers those fliers full of books to choose from, along with a semi-regular book fair that filled the school with books to choose from. My choices weren't always the most enlightened fare (I seem to remember Nintendo Power getting their game guides into the fairs), but being able to choose my own books turned me on to a lot of series like Goosebumps and Redwall. Series were rad, since I would suddenly have a dozen or more books from one author that I knew I'd like.

As I moved through high school and college, the flood of intriguing titles and trusted recommendations swelled. Satellite TV meant authors could pitch their books to me on any number of morning and evening shows. The internet - and specifically Amazon.com - put hundreds of thousands of book titles and summaries at my fingertips, and opened up communities of like-minded readers who could recommend books suited to my tastes. A driver's license meant I could go to the local bookstore to browse and get recommendations from staffers as often as I wanted, and a car radio firmly locked on NPR meant breathless and loving book reviews were constantly beamed to me. I was in book heaven - between the bookstore, the library and the internet, I could get almost any book in the world.

College is also when I landed my first job at a bookstore. In the same way that an indie record store has a reputation for being able to turn you on to good music you've never heard of, the staff of a good bookstore can kick the reading part of your brain into overdrive. Not only did I get turned onto books, authors and even genres at the store, but I got to experience another fun challenge in picking books for customers and bookclubs. In turn, regular customers tend to recommend books that they've really liked, adding to the to-be-read pile even further.

These days, the means to discover books - especially good books - are even grander. Beyond the boxes and boxes of new books I still touch every day at the store, I have a chance to talk with publisher's reps and get mouth-frothingly excited about books that aren't even close to being out yet. On Twitter, I get constant updates from friends and colleagues about what they're reading - on Fridays, the #fridayreads hashtag gives me tons of books to look out for. Other social sites like Facebook and iFanboy, magazines like Esquire, the New York Times book review and dozens of book blogs like Bookgasm and Books on the Nightstand - every day, I get hammered with new books that I have to read right now.

And then there's Goodreads. Goodreads is a book-cataloging social network; in addition to communicating with other booklovers, you can keep an online database of what books you've read, what you're reading at the moment, and what you're planning to read. You even get a daily e-mail update on all your friends on the site, and can see what they've read and what they're reading. I swear, my to-be-read pile grows by a foot or two every week solely based on what I notice Paul Montgomery is reading or wants to read.

With all these sources for book recommendations, it's tough to separate the wheat from the chaff - not only to tell good books from bad ones, but to make sure I'm finding books that I'll enjoy. Certainly, some reviewers and even the general tastes of some publications have made me take a lot of suggestions with a grain of salt. Luckily, the niches that exist on the internet these days allow us to find like-minded individuals and reviewers much more easily. I know that if Josh, Jeff or Kelly like a book, it'll be worth a second look. Of course, some of the fun is still in being the first to read a book - or discovering I loved something my friends hated and trying to suss out why.

Where do you turn for book recommendations? Do you find your book next online, through friends, or simply by cruising the shelves of a bookstore or library? Has any recommender ever burned you so badly you don't trust their suggestions anymore? And, most importantly - what are you reading right now, and how'd you find the book?

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