I wasn't sure how to name this post so it makes sense, but I'll explain more here.
I say I'm a kinda new reader because, technically, I have read, it's just that most were stuff I hated and was forced to in school. The books I've read for fun have mostly been as a kid, because afterwards I got turned away by the obligativity of reading what are considered classics in my country.
However, since late last year, I've slowly been getting back into reading. For fun this time. I might get criticized for this, but the few I read since then, I downloaded off of the internet. But now I'd like to actually buy them.
With that being said, however, how do you all decide what books to buy? Given that I'm new to (getting back into) reading, I don't exactly have favorite authors that I could make an educated guess that I'll enjoy. Buying a book is a gamble, cause the summary could sound interesting, but the story itself could still be bad. This hasn't been an issue so far, because there's no risk of not enjoying a book if I pirated it. All I would lose would be the time spent on reading however much before I drop it.
I feel like I will end up spending a lot of time pondering about whether I really want X book and reading or watching spoiler-free reviews. How do you decide what to buy? And how often do you end up not finishing a book you've bought?
(An extra question that's of less importance right now, so feel free to not answer to this next one, unless you want to, but paperback or hardcover? What I'm hearing is paperback being more portable, cheaper and comfortable, while hardcover looks way better. Most of the time I'd be reading at home anyway, so portability doesn't matter as much for me. But I would very much like it to be comfortable to hold and all and look great on shelves, so I'm undecided, heh).
Use the library. Find stuff you like. In the US, Libby and Hoopla are great digital borrowing options a lot of libraries support. I tend to actually buy fiction when it's an author/series I want day one. (Mostly audiobooks, some ebooks). For nonfiction, I do the best research I can to determine that it's evidence backed and well respected by other authors in the field (generally psychology-ish).
In terms of the format, I mostly don't do physical books. I can't carry 1000 of those in my pocket. I mostly get a handful of favorites to have on a shelf and maybe talk someone else into reading, but I'll still read on my ereader or audio. My preference is audiobook because I have a lot of time where I can listen while doing other stuff. I do get a fair number of ebooks as well, but a lot of those are programming books because audio doesn't work for code and especially because there are a lot of awesome bundles through Humble Bundle for them.