Yesterday I was at Inorbit Mall at VimanNagar Pune. There's a sprawling, all glass Crossword store there. Inside there were a couple of folks leafing through glossy magazines and coffee table books which were on sale. And, I started thinking about how I select which books to pick up and read.

• Every year I re-read a couple of books. Among these are Pather Pachali, Aparajito and Chaander Pahar. Then there's Padma Nadir Maajhi, Putul Naacher Itikatha, Love in the time of Cholera, Of Love and Other Demons, War and Remembrance, The LoTR. There's the fun of being able to discover more than I understood in the previous year - of layered meanings and sometimes forgotten episodes.
• I've found Goodreads.com to be a good source of reading up on newer books and, their reviews. Interesting book reviews or, even books that have an interesting topic as their core can be picked up.
• Twitter and Facebook are good, but I don't harvest recommendations as much as I can.
• After the purchase of the Kindle and, the subsequent setting up of newsletter notifications, Amazon sends a steady stream of book recommendations by genre. All very nice, linked to reviews and all of that. That forms another source.
• I usually keep a list of books (on the phone) I'd like to read if I see (and, mostly read through) anything that jumps out and says "read me" at the bookstores. In this aspect, Landmark at Pune does better than Crossword. I haven't yet visited CMYK. So, perhaps something would come up from there.
• I get very few book recommendations from acquaintances and friends. The usual complaint that I hear is "I don't even know whether you'd like to read it !" So, I do a sneaky follow of what they are reading and sometimes ask pretty obvious questions - that gives me an idea about what is interesting to read.
• The other thing I've noticed is that I end up doing "breadcrumb reading". That's something I just cooked up as a term. What it means that I might be reading a book and, the reviews of the book or, citations inside would open up a new vista of related books and reading material. So, breadcrumbs ... One thing leads to another and I end up reading through a good chunk of stuff.
• Finally, the newsletters from the publishers (I subscribe to a wide variety of them), help me figure out what should be on the reading list.

I wonder how others make up their reading lists ? Do you make it up at the beginning of the year, or, is it seasonal ?