April showers…..

On this  rainy April day, we are all hoping for the promised sun tomorrow.    Again, I feel the way I did on the cold and snowy day back when we started the Aria Blog.  I want to go home and curl up on the chair with the throw and read.  I am less than hundred pages from finishing, ‘Shadow of the Wind’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.  This is the first time that I have ever re-read a book.  I read this book as an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) in either 2003 or 2004.  I am reading it again because it is our book club pick for the month.  I have to say, it is keeping my attention as much as it did the first time.    I can remember bits and pieces,  but yet I can’t remember the ending.   I am hoping to be done by tomorrow.  This book is good for men and women.   If you haven’t read this book, I highly recommend it.  Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s new book, ‘Angel’s Game,  will be out in June.  They say it  is a semiprequel to ‘Shadow of the Wind’.  There are similarities, but I wouldn’t say it is a prequel or even a semiprequel.

Now on to the struggle to pick the next book to read.  Do I pick an ARC or do I pick a paperback to preview for book club?  What about a hardcover?  Old or new?  The anticipation of picking a book is fun, but as a bookseller I feel pressure on picking the one I can hand sell.  I have read so many ARC’s this year so far, that I should read something that is on the top sellers list.

Sometimes I feel I don’t read fast enough.  Over the years of owning the bookstore I have become a faster reader.  My problem is that I am not always reading just one book.  For instance, last night I chose to read, ‘Crops in Pots’.  I am interested in having  a garden in pots this summer on my porch ie. tomatos, herbs, beans and peas.  I read this how-to book instead of my novel.  This happens much more than I realize.  I tell my customers what a slow reader I am, but now the light bulb has come on.  I have read many self-help books over the years.  I’ve read many health and fitness books in my quest to become slim, during my divorce I read several books on recovery and becoming my own person, and who can deny themselves at purusing through the cook books of all types?.   There is also not a day that goes by that I am not studying the lastest top sellers, reading blurbs on up and coming titles, or reading the gossip on the big book companies.  I always thought that being  a bookseller I would be able to sit here and read all day.  Honestly, I have done that maybe twice in the last 6-1/2 years, and those two days were snow storms.  Granted, I have been able to read a chapter here and there, but nothing like I dreamed before opening the store.