We all tend to stick to the same authors and genres and find it difficult to move sideways into other areas. Often, even if we want to try something different, we don't know where to start. Or if we take a risk and it doesn't work out, we end up feeling like it's somehow our fault for making a bad choice.
One of the ways of avoiding this is by offering readers a surprise. What is a surprise? It can be charming, intriguing, unpleasant, boring, disappointing or a revelation. In any event, a surprise is something you can accept or reject – it is not a recommendation or a task.
Plenty of libraries have had success by gift wrapping paperbacks and offering a blind choice. Others have used the surprise to introduce new areas of fiction to housebound readers. If you can think about ways to offer surprises to readers, you can break down a lot of the barriers that stop us choosing one for ourselves.