|
I do this all the time. At the library, I have a look at what's on both the display shelves (the librarians are usually pretty good about putting older books up as "featured"), and also the stuff that's neighbouring any books I'm specifically looking up.
If something about the title/cover/description/bare flipthrough appeals, I'll usually take it home to try out and if it doesn't work for me, back it goes.
Same with e-books, which is why I download practically all the free offerings which appear to be of reasonable writing quality and not totally turn-off subject matter.
I try them based on whether there's some sort of "hook" that ties into my favourite reading quirks (setting, theme, subject, etc.) or the description sounds interesting enough to give it a go. Sometimes it pays off and I've had a fairly decent to really good read, sometimes it doesn't and I'm out nothing more than time spent.
Mind you, it does help that I don't feel compelled (except in cases of extreme morbid curiosity) to finish every book I start, and will merrily abandon reading if the first few pages feel like a slog that's not going to pay off anytime soon.
I've found a fair amount of entertaining stuff this way, and my gem-to-decent-to-dud ratio is probably at 3:5:2.
Of course, this isn't entirely random, since I do a certain amount of pre-filtering based on my standard reading quirks. But I try not to exclude anything simply because I've never tried such a book before, and I've even read and enjoyed selected Christian Fiction and genre Romance, which aren't normally my style at all, due to the various promo freebies.
Although on a personal level, the sample dud ratio was higher for those categories in between the "good" ones I found.
And I do sometimes read and pay attention to reviews if they seem reasonable; I read a lot of genre fiction and non-fiction and a convincingly-written review from a credible venue has helped steer me towards some of my favourite works. But I don't give them any more weight than a strong recommendation pointing out that a book which has elements that sound like they interest me might handle them well/poorly.
|