Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The Reading Room (17)



The Reading Room is a weekly update on books I'm reading and planning to read, posted on Tuesdays. It was inspired by the feature On Myshelf at the blog All By Myshelf.

I've finished three of the books from my last post; I loved Write Naked and The Red Pyramid, and you can see my review of Paper Covers Rock here. Now I'm moving on to Defining Dulcie. Hopefully it'll be just as good as the other books were. I also have a birthday coming up soon, which means I might have some new books to blog about next week.

Despite all this, when I went down to the library to return the books I'd already finished, of course I checked out more. The first one that caught my eye was Lizard Love, by Wendy Townsend. I'd seen it before but never really taken a close look at it, and it looks interesting - there's themes that I've seen in other books, but the plot itself looks pretty original, so it should be a good read. I also grabbed The Smile by Donna Jo Napoli, which caught my eye for several reasons - first, one of my friends read it last summer and said it was good; secondly, it's another book to add to my reading list for the YA Historical Fiction challenge, which is looking pretty sad in comparison to my other reading lists; and finally, it was written by Donna Jo Napoli, author of Lights on the Nile, which I read and liked.

Then I ventured out of the YA section and into the adult fiction shelves, where I found myself asking some interesting questions. The first thing I noticed was that there didn't seem to be as many new books  as there had been in the young adult section, which made me wonder - are there fewer new adult books being published? Is the library just not buying as many new adult books because they have more to begin with? Or are there just as many new adult books, and I just don't notice them because I don't go into that section as often?

The next question I found myself asking was "Am I more likely to pick up a book that looks like another book I've read and enjoyed?" The reason for this was that the book I grabbed was Quite A Year For Plums by Bailey White, which is similar in size and shape to La's Orchestra Saves the World. It also stood out the way La's Orchestra had because of its smaller shape and lighter cover, and the cover had a similar appearance. And both books have whimsical titles that are a little on the longer side. True, it was the book's description itself that made me check it out, but it was the title and cover that caught my eye. It would be an interesting thing to look into - would someone who enjoyed The Hunger Games be more likely to read James Patterson's Private Games, for instance? (Well...those similarities are a bit blatant, but that's the general idea.)

Still pondering this question,
~blackandwhitedreamer

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