Booksellers are magic. My old boss genuinely could find that one orange book that the customer was looking for. I’ve not reached that level of bookseller mastery, but I live in hope.
Saying that, since I’ve moved to the UK, I haven’t actually asked for book recommendations from booksellers. Half of this is because I don’t have an independent bookshop where I live – even though I know the employees at Waterstones are very knowledgeable, I never to think to ask them.
The other reason is, I think, that I’ve been looking for increasingly diverse books. My taste has become more specific. If you’ve been reading for the last couple days/weeks, you’ll know that I want to focus on debuts, translations, and texts with greater diversity in race, sexuality, etc. I’m find it increasingly difficult to browse casually in bookshops. The same goes with asking friends – although their recommendations sound great, they don’t necessarily jive with what I am trying to read.
So, to the Internet I go.
I still have conflicting feelings about using websites such as goodreads – on the whole I do agree with their ratings (although a whole different post could be made about how silly a five star rating system is) but…it still feels so cold in comparison to directly talking to a bookseller.
What are your thoughts? What are your favourite ways to find books?
whatthelog.wordpress.com 
I’m in the same boat! I used to work at a chain bookstore and the diversity in the books they shelved was barely there, but the other day I was at an independent bookstore and found that they didn’t have authors I was after either. It does become difficult when you want to expand your reading horizons beyond the hot sellers of the current time. I guess the way I’ve found them are by reading blogs such as yours, and following twitter where #ownvoices authors convene and promote their books.
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I really must use twitter more for that sort of thing! I’m a relative newbie to the world of twitter so any other hashtags you know of would be really helpful. 🙂
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Haha yeah, I’ve only just recently found the treasure trove that is twitter for finding diverse books. I’m guessing you already know this one because you did the diverse books tags, but there’s #DiverseBookBloggers that Naz at ReadDiverseBooks started. Also #WeNeedDiverseBooks 🙂
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