My Amazon wish list works not only as a list of books I want to buy, but a list of books to read. As of today the list has 105 books I want to read. About an eighth of these books are books I have read and want to own. Honestly 85% of the list if not more are books that I judge the cover for the level of reading appeal it held for me. I know that is not good, but I’ve only been wrong a few times. Once I read a book (I remember the title, but I won’t say it in case someone else may have loved this book) that looked like a scrumptious bit of reading. I read 11 chapters into the book and decided forget that, if it’s not going anywhere in 11 chapters it’s not worth my time. If an author wants a book to not go anywhere for a while they need to choose a lower of number chapters to do it in. For example I tried reading The Hobbit years ago and the first 5 chapters were torture….to me at least. My friend convinced me a few years later to give it a try again. I did and after those first 5 chapters it was great! While 5 chapters is still a lot to read through and not like, especially since they were long chapters it is much better than 11 chapters.
That aside I decided to indulge my craving yesterday at Walden Books (this craving never goes away) to buy a book from my wish list. I bought Sovay by Celia Rees. I’ve only read one other book by Celia and that was Pirates!. Just the title alone told me I would love this book and I did. Sovay has a cover that has me eager to pick it up right now and read it ahead of all the books in line before it (and there are many). I didn’t read the back of the book or inside flap. I only know it is about a girl and involves thievery.
I can’t help myself and know I should probably read about books before purchasing them. Is it the book editor that writes the back cover summary or inside flap? Well let me tell you, is it your goal to basically summarize every major event in the book? That way after reading those few paragraphs you’ve basically read the book. Come on! I want enough to make me squeal with anticipation, but not so much that I don’t need to read or buy the book. Okay maybe squeal was a little over the top…for in public. My sister doesn’t mind reading the summary. She doesn’t like that it gives too much away, but she can’t stand not to read it. She knows my reading tastes very well, probably second only to myself. If I really want to read the flap, but can’t bring myself to do it I pass the book to her. Then she gives her yah or nah opinion for if I will like the book. Obviously I trust her immensely J. In a way it is like trusting your child with a stranger, although my sister is certainly not a stranger.
I also purchased the book Queen, Empress, Concubine: Fifty Women Rulers from the Queen of
Aside from the 2 new books I bought, I also bought (guilty blush) a few from Goodwill as well. I know, I know, I don’t know when to stop buying. Actually I don’t how to stop. As you can see from my LibraryThing tag ‘To be read’ books now is almost 400 books. Remember my previous post about striving to read more books from my on personal library, well that undertaking keeps getting bigger no thanks to yours truly. Maybe I need to rethink my idea of placing another large book order with Independent Publisher Group. Rats! They just came out with their 2009 catalogs too.
An appropriate quote of the day, that I may have posted before, is below.
Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
-Henry David Thoreau
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