For me, the choice of serif body text in a book that’s meant to be read for hours at a time depends on readability and the personality of the book.
I avoid Times Roman for three reasons: First, it was designed originally for letterpress printing on newsprint, which requires legibility under less-than-ideal circumstances. Second, it’s way too common since it’s a default typeface in most operating systems. Third, there are better typefaces.
Garamond is a beautiful typeface at larger point sizes, but the heightened contrast between thicks and thins rules it out for the text of an entire book that’s meant to be read from cover to cover — at least for me. Garamond is so old that there are dozens of variations of the typeface, so I can’t universally dismiss it since some versions work pretty well for body text.
The different variations of Goudy can be good, and I like it for books that need the classic look of something from the past. I could say much the same about Meridien, Adobe Caslon, or Janson. Each has a different personality from the others, but each manages to have its own style of a classic look.
Minion is a nice, contemporary, and highly readable typeface, but it is a bit overused (even by me). Sabon is nice for the same reasons, and it lacks the overuse of Minion. Hoefler Text is a nice typeface with a more contemporary and easy-to-read look, too.
If it came down to picking serif faces that work for the body text in a book 75% of the time, I’d probably choose Sabon or Minion.
I would absolutely stay away from any free or cut-rate versions of any of these type families.