[anigbrowl]

I concur with this - Amazon or other mainstream retailers are great if you know what you're after, and Amazon's recommendation engine is not bad. But many of my most valuable literary or intellectual discoveries have come from aimless browsing, where I was in search of something interesting to read but with little advance conception of what. I bought Godel, Escher, Bach with no awareness of what it was about because I'd noticed it lurking in several window displays and one day found a copy that had been misplaced in the sci-fi section. I figure that if a book is following you around you should probably read it, an attitude that has served me well so far.

[ktRolster]

A huge advantage of libraries in general is that they are a curated collection of books on every topic. Typically the quality you get on any topic will be higher than the average new book.

Sometimes you can just walk through the library looking for something to read.