Friday Mood Recs: My favorite sources for backlist literary fiction

How to find books that no longer have buzz

Hey, readers!

My reading recently has been heavy on the new releases. While last year, most of the brand new books I was excited about were hitting shelves in the fall, this year it’s the spring new releases that have me buzzing. That’s well and good, but I like to feel like my reading is well-balanced, and currently it doesn’t. I’m hoping to find a few more backlist books to read this month.

First, let’s do a quick definition. Backlist can mean different things depending on who’s doing the talking. In the world of online readers, backlist generally means books that came out prior to this calendar year, so you may see anything published in 2023 or earlier described as backlist. For booksellers, backlist more often means books that are now out in paperback or (more broadly) the books that get shelved in the various genre specific sections of the bookstore rather than in the “new release” section. As for what it means to authors, I’ve often heard backlist used to describe everything other than their newest book.

I’m not subscribing to any single definition of backlist for the purposes of this post other than older books that I’m not seeing all over social media at the moment. Because I don’t keep an official long-running TBR, I don’t necessarily have backlist books at the forefront of my mind though I do have lots of older books I’ve been meaning to read (should we make MTR a thing?) for ages. Sometimes though, I’m looking for a book that’s, to borrow a phrase from Ann Patchett (a great sources for backlist books) new to me, but not brand new. Today’s list is comprised of my favorite sources for finding older, more under-the-radar literary fiction.