I'm a big science fiction reader. Mostly I:

• Look up lists of winners and nominees for the big awards (Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C Clarke)
• Read reviews for successive books in a series when I liked the earlier ones
• Find articles on the top SF books of all time or by year, written by respectable sources
• Get recommendations from friends who also read SF
• Occasionally post threads in the SF community here on things I've read and see what comes up in the comments

Mostly just lurking goodreads, subreddits, forums, but also signing up to some newsletters.

Ask an LLM for recommendations based on what I liked to read.

Podcast interviews with authors. Sometimes citations in YouTube explainers or public debates.

• talking with people at some organised book events (Meetups/silent book club)
• talking with friends
• sometimes browsing Bookwyrm (fediverse Goodreads)
• scrolling through Libby

Some years ago I downloaded from the high seas some torrents accounting for more than 34,000 ebooks. I loaded them in Calibre. Now, when I want to read something new, I just mindlessly scroll through the collection with my eyes closed and pick a book at random. So far, I've discovered good titles with this method ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Now, if you're talking about physical books, I tend to just wander around the bookstores or book fairs until I have my bags full and I'm too tired to walk anymore 😅.

I'll ddg a topic or genre I'm interested in, "top space alien novels" or "top novels in x universe". Or I get recommendations from the podcasts I listen to, or the shows I watch.

Generally, I consume all the material on whatever new topic or genre that is interested me at the time, and then move onto the next.

I hit up ebook sellers. They give you like 10% of the book as a free trial. That's more than enough for me to decide if I'm interested.

Reference sections and other suggested readings from the back of books I enjoyed. This is mostly for more non-fiction books but its helpful to see what the author recommends. I have often found books I love from his method and the really good ones get recommended from multiple related books. Especially if its for some interested that is new to you.

@Shkshkshk I used to use reddit, ive seen answers to one of my reddit posts like the same exact list made from the comments from chatgpt when asking for suggestions based off books i like so it might actually be helpful or it mightve pulled directly from my post where I stated my preferences and asked for suggestions. It was weirdly close to the old post.

my favorite local bookstore has employee curated picks scattered around with little hand written 1 paragraph reviews on the shelf. going in there is like a reward for finishing the last thing i read. i love independent bookstores

a fun thing that works in just about any bookstore is to go straight to the penguin books section. the standard of quality from them is quite high

With difficulty. I consult several guides. Give the highly rated stuff a read.

Reddit printsf is good.

Reddit litrpg

Winners and nominees of awards. Nebula. Bram Stoker...

Goodreads.

Royal road

Scp foundation

Fimfiction

Ultimately, find a good author, read their everything.

The library. You can also pay them to buy books for you, which stay in their system.

The esoteric method of YouTube citations + RL recommendations + Google search "[topic I'm thinking about]+ Reddit"+ source of the anime I've watched. It's fine so far but I've just gotten back into reading so I may still add yet more esoteric methods.

Water stones website, zlib, searching the name of the anime I'm watching

If you have a Prime membership, you get 1 free Kindle book a month from a short list of "first reads" (some months you get a bonus title too).

I'll also get on Libby and pull up my favorite categories and filter for available now.

It never really crossed my mind there's even a possibility to not having something to read. Thinking about it a bit more, I see few reasons for my immediate thought.

First I'm quite slow reader myself. I read rougly 10 books a year so I don't burn through as many books as some other more avid readers.

Second I read mostly SF/F and there's just so many good books and series for people interested in this genre. And while not everything is perfect, I'm probably much more tolerant to some imperfections as a genre fan.

Third, I read in my (non english) native tongue and while we're definitely limited in quantity, it's usually a bit of a filter so most of bad and trash books are excluded. Who would pay to translate and print shitty book anyway?

We have two good local sites that helps. One is basically like "local goodreads", the other is strictly SF/F fansite. Both have user ratings and reviews which help a lot. Also my best friend has similar taste in books, so we often recommend our findings to each other.