Reading books helps feed passion; they are my “mashes”, a new word I just learned that means, “an intense and usually passing infatuation; also, the object of infatuation.”

Books make me feel closer to culture because books are a conversation with someone who was so intensely interested in some subject they wrote a book about it. It’s a simple point but not to be overlooked.

Below are seven ways I find new books. This discovery period is important as I like to pretend books come into life at perfect moments, bringing intellectual serendipity.

Académie Goncourt

Seven ways I find new books to read:

1. Spy. I will crane my neck and contort myself to see the spine of a book that someone is reading. I just read the Passionate Programmer by Chad Fowler after I saw a woman reading it on the train. I made two not-really-necessary trips by her seat on the train in order to see what book she was engrossed in.
2. Browsing – it’s everything. When I lived in Barcelona, I sprinted through many novels. I learned the art of browsing at a bookstore named Laie. It was a period of feeling insatiable; every book seemed to give me something I had wanted without knowing I needed it. This feeling spurred me to read and hunt down new books. I read dozens and dozens of new authors from Peter Hoeg to Graham Greene, from Roddy Doyle to Daphen DuMaurier, from Salm Rushdie to Banana Yoshimito. The key was to browse without a thought of what I wanted, just to keep open and be ready to pounce.
3. “Chain” when you can. I like to read books, or authors, who were mentioned in other books or magazines because it somehow provides a reassuring context. For example, after reading Foreign Policy magazine, a magazine I’ve written for, I picked up the book, Intelligence and How to Get It by Richard E. Nisbett and Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. Nudge I hadn’t know about even though I became a Cass Sunstien fan after reading another of his books, Designing Democracy: What Constitutions Do.
4. Amazon recommends. I’ve been using Amazons best-of-breed recommendation engine more. It’s automatic “chaining” or, as I like to say, crowd-sourced serendipity. Finding books this way is not as satisfying though.
5. Friends and people. I like to ask people that I end up having a conversation with what they are reading. There is something intimate about going to find a book that a practical stranger has told you about the day before. It feels like they’ve slipped you a secret note and you’re a spy on a mission.
6. Prize winners . You’ll be surprised how few authors you know after looking over the winners of a few of the more notable literary awards. Nobel Prize in Literature, The Man Booker Prize, or Prix Goncourt. Pick an unknown author to let yourself uncover another world.
7. Book reviews, fall back. Cutting and insightful book reviews are a pleasure. On this front, you can’t go wrong by reading the New York Times Sunday Book Review.