The New Yorker books podcast and the NY Times books podcast, questionable publications for sure but their arts sections still remain very good, and the Guardian books section. Also the musician and writer John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats always has amazing and unusual recommendations on Gus Bluesky account.
You should read Neko Case's memoir if you want my two cents. It's amazing.
Looking through hugo/nebula nominations.
friends
i used to use goodreads but since it's owned by Amazon, i don't trust it an switched to thestorygraph.com which has really nice recommendations. of course it recommends based on my usual tastes but often also has some books i would never have checked otherwise, which i quite appreciate.
When I’m running out of books I start asking anyone interesting that I’m talking to what they are reading. If they are into that book I buy it on the spot, while we’re still talking. Occasionally they are reading something completely shit, but I’ve hit some gems. Then you have something in common with that person which is a bonus.
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
I basically do the same. The tiny local bookstore I like has a big table in the middle with titles picked by the owner. Something in there will be interesting. I can always just ask the owner if I'm stumped. It's a bit easier because I'm not a single-genre reader, so I'm spoiled for choice.
If you're looking for wholesome yuri manga specifically I would recommend the facebook group "Wholesome Yuri Manga Panels" if you're on there
It's a public group with 100K members
I hate facebook but family members are on there and that's the only way I have contact with some of them and that facebook group is only on there
I have an entire library of wholesome yuri manga in tachiyomi but it's probably over 100 and I don't have an easy way of sharing the list since tachiyomi doesn't have a way to export categories as a text list
Also there's a guide on my gitlab snippets which is linked in my profile bio on how to find wholesome yuri
Here's a copy of the guide as of Thu 20th Feb 2025, the markdown formatting may potentially not render correctly because it's a direct copy and paste from the gitlab snippit with some small editing to reinsert line breaks and correct formatting:
x4740N's Guide to Finding Wholesome Yuri Manga.
Below is a good method i use for finding wholesome Yuri Manga that generally gives me good results I am sharing in hopes my simple method can help others find wholesome Yuri Manga.
⚠ WARNING ⚠:
IF YOU DO NOT LIKE YURI MANGA THEN THIS GUIDE ISNT FOR YOU BECAUSE ITS ONLY FOCUSED AT HELPING THOSE WHO LIKE YURI MANGA FIND WHOLESOME YURI MANGA IT WILL NOT HELP YOU IF YOU DONT LIKE YURI MANGA.
Step 1: Tag Selection.
Select the Yuri tag obviously Select other desired tags you want to find in your wholesome Yuri Manga Exclude unwholesome tags for example the tragedy tag, unwholesome tags can potentially vary for every person as its subjective.
Step 2: Look at the Manga Cover.
How does the manga cover feel, If it feels wholesome, happy or positive then its likely Wholesome Consider the emotions of the characters shown on the Manga cover How does the cover look to you ? If the cover feels unwholesome, dark or unhappy then it likey isnt a wholesome manga.
Step 3: Read the Plot.
Have a read of the plot, is it positive or negative How does the plot feel to you ? If the plot feels positive to you then its likely wholesome but if its negatieve then the manga likely isnt wholesome.
Step 4: Read Some Issues.
Read some of the issue's in the manga and judge the tone and feel of the Manga If it feels postive then its likely wholesome manga but if its negative then its likely not wholesome Manga.
Tips:
- This guide may be applicable to Anime - Remember that how someone feels about a Manga is subjective, not everyone has the same intrests as another when it comes to Manga.
- Look into yuri manga in Manga magazines from Japan aimed at Women and Girls such as Comic Yuri Hime
Recomended Sites:
- Okazu Does contain some recomendations for yuri stuff from Japan but also contains non Japanese wlw stuff.
Recomended Terms: Helpful terms to help with your search.
- Shoujo Yuri ("少女百合" In Japanese) is Girls Yuri and is Yuri Manga aimed at Girls, "Shoujo" Manga in general is aimed at Girls.
- Josei Yuri ("女性百合" In Japanese) is Womens Yuri and is Yuri Manga aimed at Women, "Josei" Manga in general is aimed at Women.
Report Yuri Bait if you Find it.
Yuri bait are manga that makes it look like a yuri relationship is going to happen but doesnt and baits the audience into thinking a yuri relationship will happen Its really unwholesome and infuriating so if you come across it then let people know and state that its Yuri bait in online reviews.
By x4740N | ©x4740N 2024 - The Future | https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/3752092
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
I recommend a fantastic niche subreddit r/printSF to you as well. I've found many great books there and enjoy the discussion too. Sorry for reddit but that community isn't nearly as active here, although it definitely has the potential to be since I always see enthusiastic discussion about SF books from Lemmyngs whenever they're brought up.
Thanks, though I'm just not going to give Reddit any more of my clicks. I left there at the first big exiguous and I'm not going back.
There aren't a lot of posts on the SF community here, but when I've posted something interesting it's gotten a lot of activity, so I know there are people reading it. Here's one from the end of the year.
trends, friends and my own ends
old sci-fi is my ends, there's always more than I can ever hope to absorb
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.
Mostly just lurking goodreads, subreddits, forums, but also signing up to some newsletters.
This is what I do too except mine is StoryGraph. I sometimes look at what other users in community are reading, look those books up and try.
Libby too has recommendations from my local libraries. I check those out.
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 😅.
picking things to read completely at random sounds like a huge waste of time
Only if you're what I call a "methodic reader", that is, someone who knows exactly what you want to read and don't want to derange from your preferred list of genres, themes and/or authors.
In my case, I like to experiment reading from authors or genres that I don't know, in different languages, many times using only the cover and title as a guide. I've discovered that things like recommendations, book clubs and social networks are not my thing. I apply the same criteria for things like manga, mahwas, webtoons and so on. So far, I can say that I've liked ~80% of what I've read.
Ask an LLM for recommendations based on what I liked to read.
This for me as well. It's why I'm now on book 7 ofthe Terms of Enlistment series by Marko Kloos
- talking with people at some organised book events (Meetups/silent book club)
- talking with friends
- sometimes browsing Bookwyrm (fediverse Goodreads)
- scrolling through Libby
Podcast interviews with authors. Sometimes citations in YouTube explainers or public debates.
And how doest thou find these podcasts
Most have been through podcasters mentioning a show they like and talking about it or having guests on from other shows. It took a pretty good amount of time to find a good collection of shows that I genuinely look forward to hearing and weed out the meh content. Here's a list I wrote when someone had a thread asking for recommendations.
- Better Offline: Ed Zitron tearing apart how shitty the tech industry has become
- QAA Podcast: studies conspiratorial thinking (originally devoted to watching Qanon lunatics), typically hilarious
- Accidental Tech Podcast: three third-party Apple developers talking about tech, primarily in the Apple ecosystem
- Chapo Traphouse: Leftist politics, typically pretty funny
- Noble Blood: history podcast retelling stories about members of nobility in short form
- Fall of Civilizations Podcast: history podcast that dives deep into civs like Carthage and the Assyrians, etc
- TrueAnon: Leftist politics, deep dives on topics
- Last Podcast on the Left (name is a horror film reference): true crime with anecdotes, lots of diversions that might not be for everyone
- Alphabet Boys: each season deep dives a taboo action by gov agencies (FBI, ATF, etc)
- Song Exploder: deep dives on the writing and recording of songs with the musicians behind them
- What Went Wrong: deep dives on movie productions
- Behind the Bastards: deep dives on terrible people throughout history, lots of diversions that might not be for everyone
- Grumpy Old Geeks: tech and nerd news (including sci-fi media) from two cynical guys who have been in the biz for years, typically funny
@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.
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.
The library. You can also pay them to buy books for you, which stay in their system.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
