So a few weeks ago I stumbled across a website called DearReader.com, a free service in which you can receive emails with a 5-minute excerpt from a current book, and by the end of the Mon/Fri week you've read enough of the book to decide whether you want to borrow or buy. Lovely idea, really - online book sampling and this particular site has a nice homey feel provided by its gracious hostess, Suzanne Beecher.
You can choose from the major genres, and choose to join more than one club. For reasons not particularly clear to me at the time, I initially signed up for the Good News club. Not because I'm really into writing of a Chicken-Soup-Gets-Religion bent, but I do keep an eye out for things my mom might enjoy, and the initial selection was a piece set in Pennsylvania among the Amish. (Which I generally avoid reading about too because it's tough to take, having lived around them for so many years - makes me uncomfortable to see that life romanticized when so many animals live lives of torture in their dominion.)
Anyway. That was the selection when I joined. On a Thursday. Which meant I was already three excerpts behind before I started. Then it's like I'm compelled to go back and catch up the missed samples and it all becomes an(other) item on the to-do list which, like all the other items, is behind before it even gets on the list. Go to guilt, go direclty to guilt, do not pass go... This is like growing up Catholic without all the trouble of learning catechism. I fretted awhile over whether to add back reading to my backlog, and I let that title go and figure I'll just look forward to the next week's read.
The excerpts are sent with a subject line that denotes the genre and the current title. So I open my mailbox the following Monday and I see
Subject: Good News - Dachau
I'm sure it's a very inspiring story (based on a true story of a priest in Nazi Germany) but gas chamber is just not what I think of when I want good news. I skim a little and I let that go.
One or maybe two more weeks have passed and I have no idea what titles my club is reading. I am collecting unread portions of virtual books to match the piles of actual unread books that are weighing down most horizontal surfaces in my house. At least I'm consistent.
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1 comment:
At least virtual portions don't take up nearly as much space as real books!
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