Sit down and look through a pile of books, preferably with hot coffee or tea by your side. Maybe they’re books you’ve heard of, or books that others have recommended. Perhaps the covers or titles look interesting, or perhaps you’re familar with the author. Some should be random, plucked off the shelves while you know next to nothing about them. Step outside of your comfort zone and grab a few from genres you don’t normally read. Peruse them slowly. Examine each volume. Read synopses and perhaps the opening lines or chapters of some of them. Get a feel for what types of books they are, the stories they tell, and eventually decide which ones interest you. You’ve just had a book tasting. Now go and read.

At the start of the year, we had a family book tasting. The past couple of years we’ve read a lot of fantastic books, but we’ve also passed over a lot that the kids weren’t quite ready for. This year we decided to look through our library together and explore some intriguing books to decide what to read. We read back covers and book flaps, examined cover art and titles, talked about authors and genres, and generally got excited about books. In the process we worked up a list of what we want to read this year. Granted, this list is probably too ambitious, and still other books will probably be added to it, but anything that we don’t get to this year can be moved along to 2018.