Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,

While I mentioned a while back that I don't really have any interest in collecting books to fill a shelf in my home, I have nonetheless been slowly acquiring books from the list.

Every time I visit a used bookstore, in search of a couple of elusive titles (Loving by Henry Green), I naturally stumble across other books from the list. And often those books are pretty cheap, and as I result, I now own seven books from the list.

Three of the books are ones I've already read, Catch-22, The Catcher in the Rye, and Brideshead Revisited. The other four books are of course unread, and will almost certainly be saved until the end of this journey, as I'm guaranteed to have a copy available.

But seeing these seven books on my shelf often cause me to re-think my policy of not buying books. I'm really not into 'clutter' and I see books that I'll likely never read again, as clutter. But then I think of having all 100 books on a shelf, to sit and admire, and reflect on the journey that was reading through them. 

Often give us soldiers the lie: but we pay them for

My reading through a list of 100 books has meant that I have had to get my hands on...100 different books. While I understand the appeal of buying books and having them displayed on a bookshelf in one's home, it isn't really for me. Maybe if the books I bought were leather-bound first editions, but I have no desire to line my shelf with a collection of paperbacks, most of which I will never read again.

So, to read through these books I've been making good use of the library. Of the 65 books I've read so far, 60 were from the library. However, the library doesn't have every book on the list. To ensure that I'll never been in a situation where I'm waiting to read the 100th book, I've always kept my eyes open for these missing titles at every used bookstore I visit.

Currently my two most sought titles are Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone, and Loving by Henry Green. There are other titles the library currently doesn't have, but I know this is only because their previous copies were discarded and are being replaced (White Noise).

This I do vow and this shall ever be;

Maxine Paetro, Marshall Karp, Howard Roughan, Peter de Jong, Mark Sullivan, David Ellis, and Michael Ledwidge.

If you guessed 'who are seven people who have never been in my kitchen,' you'd be correct.  But I also would have accepted seven people who have 'co-authored' books with James Patterson.  It's part of an alarming trend that is sweeping the book world.  Okay, maybe 'alarming' is a little harsh, but it does bother me.

I see this happening all over the place, but three of the past fifty years' most popular authors really come to mind.  Robert Ludlum died in 2001, but that hasn't stopped him and his associate, Eric Van Lustbader from releasing close to a dozen books since then.  From my understanding, Clive Cussler is all but retired, yet he 'with Dirk Cussler,' his son, have published four book in the past 12 years.  And the worst, James Patterson, has 'co-authored' 60 novels in the past twenty years. 60!

Now I understand writing books is a business, and these hard working people are just trying to make a few dollars, I have no problem with that.  But Ludlum is dead, so he isn't trying to make a few dollars, his estate is, or his publisher is, and Van Lustbader is just trying to capitalize on a popular author's name.  I guess that shouldn't bother me, but I picture people buying these Van Lustbader books as presents, 'oh I know he loves Robert Ludlum, and this one is brand new!'

Without a doubt, the worst offender is James Patterson.  I have read that 1 in 17 books sold in the United States involve James Patterson.  While this sound impressive, it is less so when you consider he's 'writing' 1 in 5 books in the United States.  The man has had a very successful run with his Alex Cross series, which released its 17th sequel last year and has two more scheduled to come out in the next year.  I can't imagine money is a problem for the man, so why would he feel the need to throw his name on every book that comes across his desk?

Admittedly, I was unlikely to ever pick up a James Patterson book to begin with, but I just find it cheapens his all career to see so many books with 'James Patterson' in bold letters at the top and 'with so and so' in much smaller font at the bottom.  We're not fooled into thinking that each of these books involved Patterson and this other loser sitting down, throwing ideas back and forth, and truly writing the book together.  Instead it involved the 'with' person writing the book, Patterson or his people giving it an okay, and it going to print.

Allow me to make this vow to you:  I will never read a book that is 'co-authored,' when one of the authors is either dead, retired, or couldn't possible have contributed to the book as he also happened to release 37 other books that week.  That is my vow to you.

Should be, or should not be: that is the question.

I love going to bookstores.  And it doesn't really matter what type of bookstore it is.  It can be a large store that's part of a national chain, a small independent, or a used bookstore.  Each has it's own charms, it's positives and of course, it's negatives.  But they all offer the opportunity to walk the stacks, browse through the titles, and find things to add to my 'to-read' list. 

While naturally the bulk of my reads the past couple of years have been from this list, there are a few gems I've found merely stumbling across them at a bookstore.  I look at Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue as a perfect example of a book I probably never would have read if I restricted my titles to things I found on-line or things others had recommended.

The gems I find aren't usually being displayed in the front window or a front-of-store display; they're hidden on a shelf, wedged between a couple of better known titles.  But browsing in a bookstore doesn't just offer me the chance to find new things to read. It also offers a glimpse at what the general public is reading.  And it isn't always pretty.

When I look at the first 50 books I've read from The List, most highly regarded, I notice they all share a common trait; most of them aren't prominently displayed.  I've talked last month about The Sot-Weed Factor and how nobody has ever heard of it.  Naturally it is hidden amongst the B's in the Fiction section, if you can even find a copy, which is too bad as it is such a great book.  This probably wouldn't bother me very much, if it wasn't for the fact that A Shore Thing by Snooki, is.

I'm always on the look our for what I call 'books that shouldn't be.'  A Shore Thing is definitely near the top of the list.  How somebody like this can be a 'published author' is beyond me and a symptom of everything that is wrong with society.  I remember the furor caused a year or two ago, when Snooki was paid $35,000 to speak at Rutgers in New Jersey, while they had only paid Toni Morrison $32,000.  How could a Pulitzer-winning novelist be paid less than Snooki!?  they cried.  My thought was always not how could Snooki be paid more, but rather how she could be paid at all.  But, I digress.

If Snooki's book/books (she has others, sadly) weren't enough, the Kardashians have also recently published a novel; Dollhouse.  It's bad enough when a novel has two authors, and this one has three.  Three sisters, who have no business writing a book.  It sounds like a really great plot too; it's about three sisters, whose mother marries a well-known, retired athlete, and the three sisters become famous for no reason.  I guess it's more historical fiction.

I wonder if I should take any solace in the fact that these books, like a Sarah Palin autobiography, were completely written by a ghost writer, likely without any input from the name on the cover.  At least an actual author wrote the book.  But I think at the end of the day, my beef isn't with the fact that they wrote a book, but instead that they are able to sell these books.  And worst of all, these 'books' are featured in many bookstores, while it's nearly impossible to find a copy of The Berlin Stories.


My progress continues, slowly but surely, on All the King's Men.  It's been a little slow starting, but things are starting to pick up.  I'm also tackling a book called The Leap by a local Calgarian author.  Both are due back to the library soon and neither can be renewed.  To the reading mobile!