The second was more strategic shelf shopping, no matter how many times you tell me you can't judge a book by its cover, I will continue to disagree. I can usually tell by inspecting the external parts of a book, cover quotes, and panel summary if I'll even consider reading a book, let alone like it. That being said there are rare exceptions, for example Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games. I never would pick this book up off a shelf, and even given its description it would be unlikely it would attract my attention. When it was added to our summer reading list for the seventh grade I was forced to pick it up and enjoyed it, I even went on to read the next two books of the trilogy (unfortunately I can't say I like them nearly as well). When I go to the library I'll surf the new books section, and often turn up some gems, but for the most part i have always stuck to the glossy easily accessible displays. Learning to shift through thousands of shelved books is a whole other story.
Also there is a hefty dose of romance creeping onto the list. Literally hundreds of ripped bodices littering the literary floor. Most are Jo Beverly, from her Company of Rogue's novels and the incomparable Malloren family. Joanne Sundell was a shelf shopping find I made, and her works are chaste by comparison and have truly interesting plot lines. I make no bones about enjoying romance and am a big advocate of the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and read their book in 2010. I think its a legitimate genre like any other, and is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about reading. I didn't always, I remember reading these kind of books in middle school (to learn about sex, why else?) and covering them, with brown paper bags from the grocery store, just like textbooks. It sounds ridiculous now but honestly, I think I would have died if my father saw me reading a book with a bare-chested mullet sporting man ravishing a damsel whose dress was partially torn off. Wouldn't you? Thank God I've matured beyond that...sort of.
