{"id":1983,"date":"2013-03-06T07:51:56","date_gmt":"2013-03-06T13:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=1983"},"modified":"2016-10-22T09:40:55","modified_gmt":"2016-10-22T14:40:55","slug":"how-do-you-know-whether-to-ignore-read-or-buy-a-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=1983","title":{"rendered":"How do you know whether to ignore, read, or buy a book?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This post is for those who have ever finished a book and said, \u201cI not only want my money back, but I want my day back! That was awful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Congratulations! You have joined the club of discerning readers. In a way that can be a good thing because it means you are either 1. Reading widely; 2. Reading a new author; or 3. Reading thoughtfully.<\/p>\n<p>Or it could mean you need some help with choosing books. That is what we will do here. Here are a few tips &#8211; then add your own in the comment section.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>Evaluate the externals.<\/b>\n<ol>\n<li>Before you get any further:\n<ul>\n<li>Does it have an interesting title?<\/li>\n<li>Does it have a good cover?<\/li>\n<li>Does it have a good publisher?<\/li>\n<li>Does it have good recommendations?<\/li>\n<li>Does it have a picture of a lonely looking woman on the cover?\u00a0<em>Chances are that is how you will feel after reading it.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li><b>Read reviews!<\/b>\n<ol>\n<li>Before you ever read a book you <i>have to<\/i>,<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"> have to<\/span>, <b>have to<\/b> read a review on it. This tip alone can save you hundreds of hours of confusing, heretical, and just plain poor writing.<\/li>\n<li>A great place to do this is at <a title=\"amazon.com\" href=\"www.amazon.com\" target=\"_blank\">www.amazon.com<\/a> . Make sure you check the \u201chelpful box\u201d on the fair reviews and the \u201cnot helpful\u201d box on the bad ones &#8211; giving the fair reviews a higher standing than the biased ones. I post <a title=\"all my reviews\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/cdp\/member-reviews\/AOFGOUMXLMVZS\/ref=cm_cr_pr_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&amp;sort_by=MostRecentReview\" target=\"_blank\">all my reviews<\/a> over there.<\/li>\n<li>Other places include googlebooks.com and goodreads.com\n<ul>\n<li>I have found that Amazon normally has the best ones.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<li><b>If you don\u2019t know the author, check it out at a library.<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Find good authors and stick with them.<\/b>\n<ol>\n<li>If they consistently put out good material, buy it.\n<ul>\n<li>Supporting them helps them write more. Everyone benefits.<\/li>\n<li>In addition, get other people hooked on them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>We have a few authors that we try to buy whatever they have written\n<ol>\n<li>Fiction\n<ul>\n<li>C.S. Lewis<\/li>\n<li>Andrew Peterson (Wingfeather Saga)<\/li>\n<li>N. D. Wilson<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Christian living\n<ul>\n<li>Jerry Bridges<\/li>\n<li>Tim Keller<\/li>\n<li>David Powlison<\/li>\n<li>Martha Peace<\/li>\n<li>Elizabeth George<\/li>\n<li>Paul Tripp<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>What are some criteria you put on reading\/buying books? Do you have any authors you could recommend to us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This post is for those who have ever finished a book and said, \u201cI not only want my money back, but I want my day back! That was awful.\u201d Congratulations! You have joined the club of discerning readers. In a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=1983\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[35],"tags":[36,37,38,67],"class_list":["post-1983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","tag-books","tag-library","tag-organization","tag-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34kFn-vZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1983"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2212,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983\/revisions\/2212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}