I went to my childhood library today. Not to look at books or get a library card or talk to my favorite librarians or log on to play The Magic School Bus on the PC for thirty minutes, but for a meeting with a client through my business. Because I guess I’m an adult now.
Part of being an adult is being punctual. Or maybe that’s just me. My mom taught me from a young age that if you’re not five minutes early, you’re late. I arrived to my meeting twenty minutes early and awkwardly wandered around like a lost child, gazing at new installments and features and breathing in the library smell.
I still had a few minutes on the clock, so I wandered over to the New Titles shelf—-what used to be my favorite shelf. In a pessimistic cursory glance, I dismissed half of the covers sitting out, remembering negative reviews and poor scores on Goodreads and Amazon.
You know what I miss? The days of reading a book just because the cover was pretty or the description sounded good — no other information and no tainted preconceived notions from reading a two-star review and opinion. In many, many ways, this book blogging life and constant checking into Goodreads is amazing and fun and fulfilling.
But in others, it’s taken the simplicity out of the most simple thing I love to do — read.
lifebetweenreads.com 
Lauren, this is great. I don’t know what it’s like to go to the library and pick up a book to read just because the cover’s pretty. However, I do have the luxury of not reading reviews. I always want to read people’s reviews, to support them in their endeavors to be book bloggers, but at the same time, I don’t want to have a biased idea of a book before I read it.
For that reason, I don’t read a review unless I’ve read the book. Perhaps that’s bad of me, but I can’t help it. I’ve always preferred to form my own opinion, whether that ends up being the same or different from someone else, but at least I know how I feel about the book, as opposed to how someone else feeling about the book.
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I think that’s awesome, actually! I’m always scared of putting down cold, hard cash for a book that I won’t love. It’s a little different when I’m requesting galleys—I’ll take a chance on those. Maybe this will be a New Year’s resolution for me—no peeking at reviews 🙂
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I don’t think I mind putting up money for books (even if I won’t like them), but I also see it as an investment for filling my library. (You know, my future library, in my giant victorian style house, with a spiraling fire place that hides my giant library *cough*)
Yay! New Years Resolutions! I’m still working on mine.
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