book noob

Buying books is stressful. There, I've said it. For my birthday, a friend gave me a $20 gift card for Borders. About a month later, the manager at the gym rewards every staff with a $10 gift card for Borders. So I have $30 to spend on anything in Borders and I have decided, maybe it's time to buy a book. I've always wanted to buy a book. Just to diminish that jock-ish persona about myself a little, and integrate a little bit of intellectuality in my life.

In my defense, I do read books. I have read quite a number, I might add, but all of which I borrowed from friends and the Metro College library and what have you. Oh, and Jon bought me an Agatha Christie for my 21st birthday. I've only ever bought myself 2 books in my life. And they're special edition books from the teenage fiction series Fearless by Franscine Pascal. Yes, the one who wrote Sweet Valley. But I followed Fearless until Novel House disappeared from Taipan. I loved that series so much, I plan to name my future daughters Gaia and Katia based on that book. =) So eventhough, I admit to being an extremely slow reader, I have read books and popular ones, too.

So why is it stressful, now that I have free money to buy myself a book?

Well, for starters, I just realised books are pretty darn expensive! An average sized book costs at least $30. It's ridiculous! There I was thinking I could get 2 books with my gift cards and just pay a little bit more. But it looks like I can only afford one book and still have to fork out a bit more.

Second of all, because I can only afford one book, making a decision to pick the book is so hard! See, I don't buy books. So if I'm about to get myself this one book, I want this book to be a representative of me, my character, my personality. I want this one book on the book shelf, alongside my 2 Fearless books, to give people an idea of who i am! And I don't want to waste that $30 on something which I don't really like halfway through. It has to be a book i absolutely love from cover to cover because I don't buy books, but I "had to buy" that one. Even if it was a gift. Am I making any sense?

So i've been diligently browsing Borders and Whitcoulls whenever I have some spare time, either waiting for the train, or waiting for work to start. And each time I pick up a different book, I start reading a few pages and i realise...i am into it! And I really want to bring it home and finish it...but how can I decide?!

There're books by Jodi Picoult, author of My Sister's Keeper which i absolutely loved when I read it. I was reading A Change of Heart and The Pact earlier on and i loved the stories of both of them. But then I picked up this other book about romance and comedy and I thought, hey, that's pretty hilarious! And today i spotted a new book by Mary Higgins Clark, my favourite thriller author! I spent a good amount of my time reading her short stories while I was in Metro. Then there're those movie novels, like Twilight and Chocolat which I hear are pretty good as well.

Oh, the fickleness! I really cannot decide what to blow my $30 on. I have decided to put my book search on hold for now and start reading The Da Vinci Code, which the boyfriend lent me before I came here. I didn't particularly enjoy Angels and Demons until I was about 2/3 through the book. I don't know if I'll survive through the first 10 chapters of Da Vinci but I shall try, since the book is already here, now, in my hands.

heh.