Using r/fantasy as a resource to expand your TBR – a guide

11:02 am | February 16, 2020 | Comments 2

How to find new books on reddit fantasy? I’ve got a guide to using reddit r/fantasy as a resource . Links to lists, guides, spreadsheets.

This guide is split into two parts, the newbie’s guide and the “I can still breathe under my TBR, crush me with more” guide. Feel free to skip the newbie part if you’re familiar with using r/fantasy and just want the more out of the way lists.

Where do you find new books? It’s a question that comes up now and then, and since r/fantasy has so many lists and features, I thought it might be helpful to try and gather them into a little long-ass guide. I’m sure this will not possibly be exhaustive. 

The newbie’s guide to r/fantasy

This part of the guide covers the more obvious features and the official lists. 

1. The search function  Reddit’s search can be wonky, but if you’re looking for weirdly specific things it can work out nice. You can also google search and add “reddit” for better results, sometimes 

2. Official resources in the menu:  In new reddit you can see the menu at the top of the page , old reddit menu is no longer up-to-date, but you can find some things here, and on mobile you just go to the menu tab 

a. The Find Books tab on the menu, has the most info for finding books 

i. The Recommendation guide  is a great and much more concise guide than this one 

ii. The Top Lists  will take you to the main official voted-for lists that are organized each year. Just going through these can keep you in books for years . Some of my favorites on here are the Standalone and the Audiobook lists. The top lists are biased towards popularity, but they’re still great. 

iii.The Theme Lists are a little less known, as they’re not run on a schedule, but this is where some of the good specific stuff is like 

r/fantasy’s LGBTQ+ Character Database! (Mark II) by u/KristaDBall

Women Authors in Epic Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery by u/CourtneySchafer

/r/fantasy Big List of Asian Novels by u/The_Real_JS

/r/fantasy Big List of African and Middle Eastern Inspired Novels by u/The_Real_JS

iv. The Flowchart by u/Lyrrael is a great place to start if you’ve only read a handful of fantasy series and want to get a feel for the genre, there’s a LOT more to it than epic fantasy.There’s also the Female-Authored Flowchart by u/CoffeeArchives

b. Book bingo, run by u/lrich1024, is possible the best, craziest and more exhausting way to expand your TBR. It’s a yearly reading challenge running from April to March, consisting of 25 bingo squares, meant to push you out of your comfort zone. 

i. Even if you don’t want to participate in the challenge, the Big thread of recs is an awesome source of hundreds of very specific recs. 

ii. A little harder to navigate the 2018 r/Fantasy Bingo Statistics can give you the raw data of all the books read, in spreadsheet form. Same for 2017. These are put together by u/FarragutCircle

c. Under r/fantasy exclusives you can find 

i. The Stabby Awards  the subreddit’s yearly voted for awards, which include books, art and reddit contributors and posts 

ii. The Author Appreciation series is perfect for digging into to the works of some older authors 

3. Regular threads 

a. The Megathread is a stickied thread containing links to a lot of the regular features. The main ones to check out for finding books are: 

i. Monthly Book Club Hub For instance if you’re looking for fantasy romance, the going through the HEA bookclub’s nomination threads can be a great way to find lots of books, run by u/thequeensownfool

ii. The weekly Self-Promotion Thread  on Sundays is a great place to find indie books 

4. Asking for recommendations: self-thread or the daily rec thread? 

    1. The easiest way to find the /r/Fantasy – Daily Recommendation Requests and Simple Questions Thread might be to use the search box, I go for Daily Recommendation and restrict it by 24 Hr and r/fantasy. I wouldn’t expect to have a lot of luck posting in a 20 hour old thread, but I dunno exactly where I’d draw that line
    2. You can also do a self-post /stand alone post, but keep in mind that with the Low Effort Post Policy Changes, unless you make a thought out post, it might get removed and you redirected to the daily thread
    3. I have no stats on this, but I get the feeling the Daily Thread gets more regular users giving personalized recs, where the stand alone threads get more visibility but also more generic recs, be prepared for someone to suggest Malazan/Mistborn/Wheel of Time, no matter what you ask for in self-post

The “I can still breathe under my TBR, crush me with more” guide

And now for the really good stuff. R/fantasy users are amazing, and they’ve come up with tons of resources which are not always easy to find, which is what prompted the idea for this guide. Mostly I just wanted to gather as many of the links in one place so I can find them easier myself. This got ridiculously long, sorry not sorry

Sources: my bookmarks and memories, and stabby nominated threads

In no particular order, and if you’ve got others please lemme know. I know I’ve seen more subgenre lists but can’t remember them.  

Tangential to finding new books as they reference specific series/books, but I came across them in my searches: 

 

Well that’s about it, a loooong list of lists, hope it’s helpful. If you found this interesting you might want to check out my r/fantasy bingo posts.

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Comments

  1. Lisa @ waytoofantasy says:
    February 16, 2020 at 3:15 pm

    I love this post. That is all.

    Reply
    1. Dianthaa says:
      February 16, 2020 at 3:17 pm

      Well shucks, thank you

      Reply

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