New Books

So lately I've been thinking a lot about how we discover new books and what prompts us to read them. Right now I'm reading Call Me By Your Name, which I found via the Amazon Book Blog, which is great.

I use Amazon a lot when I'm considering new books. I'll read the reviews, I'll read the user reviews, and if it has the feature, I'll take a look at the first few pages and see if I like it. Then I'll check to see if the Chicago Public Library system has it (usually they do, unless it's a really new book).

Then I'll add it to my Wish List on Amazon as a way to track which books I'm interested in reading.

I used to have a list like that on a sheet of paper but it's so messy and it got lost a few times. It's much easier to handle it on Amazon.

So Amazon, which I sometimes use to buy a book I really liked or really want, is very useful to someone like me, even if I rarely buy from them.

PS. Here's another way we take a chance on books: I went to the library to request Confessions of an Economic Hitman for me and A Thousand Splendid Suns for Mindy (which I too will read) and a Japanese woman helped me. When I asked for Hosseini's book she said:

"Ohhhhh, very good, very good. Hiss first a book, a Kite Runner, sooooo good. Sooo good. You read a this and you think 'He a cannot write a better, impossible.' Hosseini, he is doctor. Training as doctor. No writer. He come from Afghanistan when was nine."

Here she let out a guffaw.

"I think impossible! How a man write so good who is doctor and in other language! Impossible!"

So now of course I'm going to read Kite Runner. It was on the list, but it just jumped way up on the priority chart. It's one of those things that, if I see enough passion and enthusiasm from someone about something, I will want to look into it myself and see if I too will feel some of that magic.