Books (or How I Grew to Love My Shallow Side)

Today Jesse and I went to Barnes and Noble for good times looking at books. He has a 30% discount because Gamestop and B&N have sex or something. He also has 50% off in the cafe. Yes! While Jesse wandered around looking for smart current events type books, I wandered in fiction, then remembered the BBC Big Read Book List. Every blog or post about this I've seen says that the BBC "reckons people have only read 6 of the 100 books" when really it looks like to me that folks in the UK voted on books they like. Why do people want to make Brits out to be asses all the time?

When I looked through the list, I'd only read 17. That makes me sad because I consider myself well-read. So I looked through the classics section for something that struck my fancy. Jane Eyre jumped out at me. I've never read a Bronte novel and I thought it would make good beach reading. The problem is that if I'm going to BUY a book, it's gotta look cool or be thin enough to fit into my purse. The copy of Jane Eyre on the classics display was neither of those things. In fact, the spine was broken, which I can not abide.

I set out into the fiction section to find Bronte and there were editions of the book there. One was hideous, but thin. The next was the Penguin classic one, which is always the most attractive publisher, I feel and it was also thin. Penguin surely going to win over the big fat one on the shelf until I saw:

a.w.e.s.o.m.e

A tradeback size edition with the cool jagged page edged and illistrated by a chick named Dame Darcy. I was drawn in, because I (like everyone else on the plant, no matter what they say) judge books by their covers. I picked it up and looked at the price. $21. Yikes. I carried it around while I walked through the bargain books trying to talk myself into buying it. In the end, Penguin won out.

It's hot. It will look good on the beach. No worries.