I've been doing a lot of reading this summer, and I tend to stockpile books because we don't have a big bookshop in town, and certainly not a good second-hand bookshop; this means I have a shelf full of pre-selected but unread books to browse through whenever I finish whatever I'm reading.
Earlier this week I started reading one of these stockpiled titles that I taken a risk on because it sounded interesting and I liked the cover art. Yeah, I know the axiom about not judging a book by it's cover but that is just not true, cover art is actually a reasonably good guide to what you can expect from a book - It's like that maddening "Forrest Gump" quote; you DO know pretty much exactly what you are going to get in a box of chocolates because there is a little guide on the lid, and most chocolates are shaped to give you some sort of clue anyway. Except for Revels, I will concede that they are tricky to identify without biting them, and it is always a shock when you are certain that you are about to eat a Malteaser and then it turns out to be a really large coffee cream. Ok, I'll give Gump Revels, but other than that it is a very unsatisfying analogy.
What was I saying?
Oh, right, so the book I started reading had very mixed reviews on GoodReads, it was a real Marmite debate between those who adored it and those who loathed it. I read three chapters and decided that I didn't want to spend anymore time with the title character and narrator of the book, so I stopped reading it and got another book from my stash. This is a very liberating feeling, to simply decide that my time is more valuable than this particular story, and move on without guilt. ***
If you'd like to see if you love this book or hate it, then I'm giving it away on GoodReads along with 11 other corkers, and you can peruse the list here and guess which one it is (Hint: It was added to the list today). Please note the list is not for mocking, it is purely to find new homes for books that I don't want, so they aren't my favourites but that doesn't mean they are bad; except not that etiquette book, that is rubbish.
*** Postscript - The book I'm talking about here is "Mathilda Savitch" by Victor Lodato. I did pick up the book again to skim read the last couple of chapters backwards, just to see whodunnit, or if anyone did anything at all really. There was a fairly pedestrian plot twist that any one reading a book about teenage girls should really be half expecting, and an icky description of Mathilda first experimentation with sex - It's like Judy Blume re-wrote "Catcher in the Rye" whilst in a particularly foul mood.
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