Familiar book covers

I saw the book cover on the left, for Words Get in the Way by Nan Rossiter, and it immediately made me think of this book cover, for Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos. I guess that rainboots aren’t the most unique things ever, but still, you’d think that, only four years after Belong to Me was such a successful novel, the marketing people behind Rossiter’s book would have gone for something else. Unless they’re trying to draw a parallel without being too obvious?  The descriptions don’t sound similar, so maybe not? Still, a curious choice of cover art.

Trend?

I recently read two contemporary romance novels in which the main dudes (must I really call them “heroes”?) were recently released prisoners. Innnteresting. America has a huge prison epidemic on our hands, and yet I don’t really see this reflected in what I read.

Of course, neither of the guys in these books did anything really awful. In fact, one hadn’t done the thing for which he’d been imprisoned. How noble. The other guy was undoubtedly guilty, but his crime was too stupid to take seriously (he DOS-ed Twitter). I’d never really had occasion to think about what it would be like to date/marry somebody with a prison record. That’s something that must be disclosed on employment applications; you can’t vote for a certain amount of time; you face a certain amount of societal prejudice.

It’s not that I read novels expecting to find realism, but I was fascinated how a genre that is commonly held to be completely frivolous could handle such a sensitive topic in completely different ways.

FYI, the books were Julie James’ A Lot Like Love and Kristan Higgins’ Too Good to be True. Of the two, I preferred the latter, although both books were enjoyable.

Second time’s the charm

I saw “Stuff White People Like” on the bargain rack approximately 37 seconds after it was released, but anybody who was interested was able to see a lot of that content on the web site. His next book seems to have a different focus, so maybe this one will do better.

Hot Guys Reading Books

Yes, please.

Every now and then, tumblr justifies its existence.

I feel like I’ve read every awful romance novel ever

But somehow I missed these doozies. Maybe it’s because I try to stay away from “the clinch,” but whatever it is, I’m thanking my lucky stars and adding these all to my Not To Be Read list.

So long, farewell

As I mention from time to time, I’m fairly obsessed with books. I get a lot of them from the library, but I buy even more. Some books I only want to read once, and then I’m done with them. Others I keep forever and will reread as the mood strikes me. Sometimes it’s not immediately clear which category a book will fall into, and it’s necessary to keep them around for a while to figure it out. Once I’ve decided that a book is not a keeper, I try to make its purchase pay off for me, anyway. There are a few book-swapping web sites that I belong to. The first, Paperbackswap, is the one I’ve been with the longest (over 3 years!), and I’ve had a good run over there. I joined the other two sites, SwapTree and Bookmooch, this year.

I was pretty happy with both of the newer services when I first joined them, because I got rid of a lot of books really quickly. Even paying postage on so many books didn’t discourage me. Of the three services, SwapTree was the only one where books were exchanged on a one to one basis. With the other services, people would request books from me and I would accrue credits by sending them. At some point in the future, I could use these credits to redeem books that I wanted from other users. Since the whole point of this exercise was to get rid of the books cluttering my house, I figured that I wouldn’t use SwapTree too much, but I actually did about as many trades there as I did on BookMooch.

Then, toward the end of the summer, SwapTree went through a lot of changes. It got a new CEO, and a new name, Swap.com. And just a couple of days ago, I received an email from them stating that they’re going to start charging members a fee for each transaction (on top of postage). Excuse me? Why would I pay to get rid of my books? I could take them to the library, list them on eBay, or try to sell them at a used bookstore. If I wanted to, I could have all of those books out of my house today, at no real cost to myself. I give a big BOO! to Swap, which I’m quitting (and a lot of other people seem to be, too).

This weekend, as if the universe wanted to tell me that I was heading in the right direction, I received two Paperbackswap requests. Take that, Swap!

Please help keep me in books and yarn* – Permanent for now

I know that this isn’t about me at all, but I feel that a little selfishness is allowed, as I will be directly affected if Governor Christie’s proposed budget is passed. As it stands, this budget would cut 74% of New Jersey library funding. By any accounting, that is an insane amount of money, even though the $10 million in library programs cut from the Governor’s budget represents little more than $1 per person in state funds.

What you can do:

• Become a NJ library champion
• Become a BCCLS (Bergen County) library champion
• Contact your legislators online (scroll down)
• Send a letter to your legislators Related: Find out who your legislators are
• Who doesn’t like a good rally? Join the May 6 rally for libraries in sexy Trenton, NJ
• Join the “Save New Jersey Libraries” Facebook Group. This is one of the most visible and least useful ways to support something, so make sure you do at least one or two of the other things, as well.

* Those are my vices, although I will admit that they’re not nearly as exciting as hookers and blow.

Anne Frank is soooo boring

No to me, because I liked her diary (I actually like reading anybody’s diary), but this Salon article about Amazon.com users giving classic books 1-star reviews cracked me up. I will take a gander myself later on and find some other examples.

Why I’m Weird

Because I would read – and enjoy – a book entitled The Doctoral Candidate and the Ravishing Researcher.

Dan Brown does not approve

Every armchair conspiracy theorist’s favorite secretive organization is stepping into the 21st century, and making a special effort to be more transparent and less mysterious, in an effort to recruit younger members. But if the Freemasons prove that they’re not trying to overthrow the world’s governments/kill all Jews/destroy Catholicism, etc, how will Dan Brown write his next book???