How adventureous do you get with the books that you take home, /lit/? I've done enough skimming around on the peripheries of the general canon in literature that I don't feel too lost whenever I walk into a book store, but I must admit that I have a lot of difficulty with trusting works that I have zero information on other than what's in-front of me, which is the cover/title/country/synopsis and whatever else is readily available. It's even worse with non-fiction books, as I immediately doubt the level of scholarship/research involved, and the author's own agendas, having to check its credibility online at least before I spend money on it. I don't have this issue with any other medium, nor with books that I digitally acquired free of charge, but when I'm out and about I tend to keep looking for authors that i've heard of in passing, probably because it takes long enough to get through a decently sized book, and therefore I can only get so many books before it becomes overwhelming. Having a very large to-read list doesn't help. It's a bit of a tunnel vision kind of thing I guess. And getting spoiled with online aggregators.
Any anons dealing with similar issues around here?

Robert Z'Dar's face will always be stronger than your favorite author's prose

>>24556935 (OP)
I’ve been buying about a dozen books a week for the last couple years, for about 10-25c each, sometimes a dollar or two.
Most of them I’m at least familiar with but I’ve bought tons of weird random shit too, maybe I should post some of them.
My best find was a 1916 copy of Arrhenius’ “The Destiny of the Stars”
> It's even worse with non-fiction books, as I immediately doubt the level of scholarship/research involved, and the author's own agendas, having to check its credibility online at least before I spend money on it
You should absolutely do that, I’d honestly say published books are bullshit or worthless. There’s just so much shit out there.
But even bad books can be worth having; I’ve started a collection of spurious and pseudo-academic books, and I got a ton of “War on Terror” Bush and Obama-era books about Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. that are all now very interesting to read as products of that specific cultural trend. The vast majority of those have not aged well, but that’s what makes them noteworthy in a way.

I’ve got that fake history book about how China’s treasure fleet discovered the Americas, that one’s fun to give to people to find out if they’re capable of reading critically or not.

>>24557116
nah not a dozen actually maybe half a dozen, some weeks more, sometimes less, but it’s a good time for cheap books right now. lots of library sales and old people dying and their inheritors thinking books are worthless

>>24557116
>say most*

>>24557116
Based as shit, anon. Good to see a proper reader who doesn't settle with the typical /lit/core BS.

>>24556935 (OP)
I love just drawing random shit from the pile

>>24556935 (OP)
I buy used from eBay accounts for cheap as fuck buy3get1 deals so I’ve try some things cold but I usually peak at goodreads. As with all internet review sites, especially given the autistic women who infest that site, I try to look at a few 4 and 3 star reviews and still take them with a grain of salt.

Honestly the most prohibitive thing for me isn’t price or whatever it’s page count. If I don’t know you or your work and the book is over 350 pages I’m likely not even going to debate buying it. That goes for well known authors I’ve never personally read a well as no-names. Most stories don’t need to be much longer than 300 pages.

>>24559063
What has been your favorite random discovery so far? This question goes for you and every other passing anon

>>24559265
300 pages really isn't that long. How much time does it take to you read that many pages?

>>24559467
2666

No joking, no irony. It was before lit for me.

>>24559921
It does have an eye-catching cover, and for good reason

I’m new to reading so I just buy one from the /lit/ 100 charts and go in blind

>>24556935 (OP)
I do this all the time and I pick up some kino
I have the Moscow Saga Trilogy that I randomly found
Several Interesting Napoleonic war books
An early post colonial farmer memoir
Because of this, I have around 1,000 books in my library that grew up in the past 6 years