Let’s Talk Bookish: Do You Keep Up With New Releases?

Hey, everyone! I hope you’re all going well and that you’re Thanksgiving went well, if you celebrate it. I’m sorry I missed Tuesday’s post; I didn’t realize the day had gone by and my schedule was pretty busy. But I’m here today with another Let’s Talk Bookish post!

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and is hosted by Rukky and Dani @ Literary Lion where we discuss various topics and share our opinions. Today’s topic is Do You Keep Up With New Releases? (suggested by Pippin @ The Pigeon).

How current is your reading? Do you tend to read recently published books or pick from the publishing backlog, and why?

My reading is a bit all over the place. At the moment, I’m reading a lot more recently published books, but I also have a bunch of backlisted books I want to read. I kind of jump between ‘recently published’ and ‘backlisted’ because I don’t read books in any particular order, it’s just what I want to read next. I don’t have any real reason as to why I do this; I mainly find books to read from other bloggers or when I happen to find one on my own. At the moment, a lot of books I’m finding are more recent. I’m reading more recently published books just to keep up with the hype of all of them.

Is there any particular merit to keeping up with current releases, or is it all hype?

For me, it’s mostly hype. I read a lot more recently published books because of the hype. I’ve been holding off reading backlisted books because new books are coming out and so many people have been raving about them. It’s nice to have read the books that a lot of people are talking about so you know what’s going on and there’s no chance for spoilers. I guess, in that way, there is a bit of merit to keeping up with them. Overall, I read them because of the hype, and of course because the book itself sounds interesting to me. There are a lot of really hyped books that I haven’t read, purely because they don’t sound like something I’d enjoy.

How has book blogging changed your habits on this front? And, in the future, are you thinking you want your reading to shift either way? 

Since I started book blogging, I’ve been paying more attention to newly released books and I’m getting more informed on them as well. Before I started, I still read books, but a lot of them were backlisted and I didn’t have as many book recommendation sources. It was usually family who got me books or if I stumbled upon a book I thought looked interesting. Blogging has opened me up to a wider variety of books as well as ones that are coming out in the future.

I don’t have any desire to shift my reading either way in the future. I would like to get to some more backlisted books, though. I’ve been so focused on a lot of newer books or ones that are really popular at the moment, I’ve been holding off on older books I’ve had on my TBR for a long time. More recently released books are on my TBR for a shorter amount of time because I have more interest in them at a given moment. With older books, I always think Oh I’ll just get to them later. And then they build up.

Conclusion

I try to keep up with new releases, but since there are so many, it’s impossible to read and keep track of all of them. I love reading the really popular books at a given time because then I get to see what all the hype is about and experience the book myself, not just through the thoughts and opinions of other people. On the other hand, I still read and enjoy reading books that are backlisted and aren’t given as much attention right now.

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Do you keep up with new releases? Is it all hype or is there any merit to it?
Do you read newly published books or backlisted ones?