What makes you pick up a book?

To be honest, I tend to just pick one off a whim. xD I literally just grab whatever I see first.

I look at the cover, skim through the... brolliant. Err, what's the English word...? *Skips to Google* Blurb! My Welshness gets me confused often. Anyway, yeah, I flick through some of the pages, maybe read the first few pages, then decide if I want to buy it.

I like the genre ones especcially that deals with abstraction or plain weird but its hard to find especcially short stoy collections. Novels are alright but I prefer short stories.

I like the genre one to. There is only certain types of books I really like to read, sometimes I get other genres but I mainly like historical romance books. Im a big romance freak I guess you would say, I sometimes will read action or something like that but thats rare.

Usually I read the back. If it's about something I like, I'll read it. Also if I really like an author, even if I don't like the subject, I'll read it. And if I like the genre, such as Realistic fiction or Romance (My faves) I'll read it.

I do a lottt of research before buying a book. I have learned from the past that the quality of the cover is not always synonymous with the quality of the book.
I will read reviews, pick it up two, three, even four times in a bookstore before buying just to read the back cover or little snippets. This can go on for months. Seriously.
It might be a little obsessive, but it almost always helps me separate the greats from the not-so-greats.

haha i usually pick from the genres i like and i dont usually venture off of them but once in a while i will read a good book that is not in my genre

I usually pick out one book from an author I know to be great, one book by someone whom I have never read before and sometimes one non-fiction book (psychology etc.). how much time I spend on considering it? 10 minutes, since I am near a large library.

Anyway, it is very rare that I book I get turns out to be not worthy of my time. Most books which I choose are absolutely great, but very rarely some books come up which I bring back the next day, such as one book by some very popular fantasy writer I can't recall right now.

I usually pick up a book based on the genre I currently like. Yes, I have a trend. Sometimes it's supernatural, then romance, then fantasy. It changes very quickly. Nonetheless, any good book would do .

It depends. Mostly, I get it because it's in the genre I like (fantasy/fiction), it sounds interesting and not too cliche, and because the cover and/or title looks interesting.
Yeah, that whole "don't judge a book by its cover" thing is so.... not like real life.

Sometimes, though, I pick a book because I want have read it, not because I necessarily want to read it. It's a complicated... emotion.
Usually this is just with classics, because I don't usually want to read them, but I want to at the same time... I guess so that when people reference things like Great Expectations or something, I won't just think "Oh yeah, I saw the Wishbone episode of that."

Frankly, I chose "I like the genre" because I wouldn't read a book that I don't like and not that I have a particular genre or something, its just that, if I like the summary of the book then I go on to read it.

If someone recommends it to me, it has to be on my interests. I have to read the summary and some more book reviews but to be honest, I don't really believe in book reviews. Those are your opinions. My library sucks so much, so I just pick a book for someone else and hand it over to them. That's what I do. They don't have ANYTHING except for Harry Potter, Meg Cabot books, Roald Dahl (boring ones of him) and lots of miscellaneous books.

So, right now, I'm reading Harry Potter again (For the 4th time), so I don't pick anything. I just pick a random book or if someone needs a book, I pick it for them. Plus, I take my own time to get a book. Like more than an hour or so. Lol. XD

What makes me pick up a book? Well, the sight of a book I know I'll like makes me palpitate.

It's actually mostly about the feeling I get when I read the title, hold it, see a couple of sentences and characters.. So I'm not going to vote.

I used to care a lot about the covers. I wasn't into reading Inkheart trilogy because it seemed too colorful and, like, made for kids, nor I was into reading Song of Ice and Fire because I didn't like the covers for some reason at the time.. Both serials I love now, and I plan on never making that mistake again :p