How and where I find out about books I want to read

• Never from book reviews: I stopped reading them many years ago because I was afraid knowing in detail what a book was about would ruin it for me. That stopped being an issue in recent years because my memory's so bad now that I can't even remember the name of the movie I watched last night. Nevertheless, I've never gone back to reading reviews, which is a complete volte-face from when I was younger and avidly read reviews, even subscribing to the New York Review of Books.

• In passing, in online stories and articles in various news sources I frequent daily: Google News (both the general version and "For You"; the Guardian; Wall Street Journal; Washington Post; New York Times.

• In the Comments section of Hacker News, which is probably my favorite website in the world and has been for the past couple years (try it, you might like it). I visit several times every day, as the home page updates and changes constantly with what readers upvote.

• From the multitude of newsletters I subscribe to: The Browser, Scope of Work, Dense Discovery, Benedict Evans, The Overspill. The Browser and The Overspill are M-F dailies; Dense Discovery and Benedict Evans are more or less weekly; Scope of Work is erratic, perhaps twice a month. I pay for The Browser and Scope of Work, the other three are free.

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FunFact: when 2026 started I decided to keep track of how many books I read during the year. I was diligent through January but then got tired of paying attention and writing down the finish dates and titles. Up top and below, 

my list, no longer being updated. In January I read 9 (nine) books, which seems about my pace since I was in high school; so perhaps 2/week, 100±/year.