Regular. Always regular.
In most cases, you won’t have much of a choice. Most fonts have two font weights: regular and bold – each in two font styles: Roman and italic. Bold will look very obviously wrong on the page – except for the places where it is conventionally used – which just leaves you with the regular font weight.
There are some fonts, however, that come with a far greater choice of weights. An example is the font EB Garamond – an excellent version of Garamond that everyone should have, and which is available on Google Fonts. EB Garamond has many more than the standard font weights – it has regular, medium, semi-bold, bold, and extra bold. There are also, increasingly, variable fonts – where you can set the font weight to any number.
In these cases, you should still use the regular font weight. Generally, the type designer will have designed the typeface with the idea in mind that the regular font weight will be used for print paragraph text. That’s what they intend for you to use. Other font weights are for headings – and even more so for graphic design.
It’s worth noting that two fonts from different families but of the same weight may not look like they are the same weight on the page. Some fonts can look heavier on the page than others even at the same weight. For example, fonts like Bodoni and Didot tend to look heavier than fonts like Garamond – and this is just because of the general shape of the letterforms. When choosing a font, it’s important not to choose one that is too heavy or too light at its regular font weight. (If it is too heavy or too light, that can be an indication that the font was not designed for use in print books, and was instead designed for use at large print sizes or in digital artwork.)
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