robot_mel and beluosus), and I think we're due to read it in a few months. Anyway, this is what I saw when I opened the book:Hi! Hope you will enjoy this book more than I could do. The book was my mother's, and as far as I know no one ever read it so I'm glad it will now reach a better owner! - Hilda
Not very encouraging, is it?
At any rate, last year I read 44 books. I keep the list permanently on my LJ page, so if you're ever interested (and I assume nobody but me is), it is there. Oddly, I started the "books read" and "books bought" list as a way of keeping track of whether or not the number of books I read was anywhere near to the number of books bought, as I seem to acquire a HUGE number of books. I managed to finally shift the number to more bought than read for the first time last year thanks to, well, borrowing from
booklectic. This year, she and Bookmooch were huge aids in pumping up the number of free reads I got in, as I don't count books received as gifts against my total. However, I've lost a bit the value these lists have in helping me remember what I actually have; in years gone by I've been able to do a search on the list and discover if I've read or bought a given book since 2004. This is very helpful when you're in a used book shop and trying to decide if you have book X in series Y for which there are N books total and you may only be on book 2 but wanting to take advantage of used book store prices to fill in the gaps in the series. By the way, I know a lot of you might say "Use the library!" but I got too many late book fees for this to be a good plan for me; I read books at my own pace, and libraries don't like it if you want to drag out reading a particular book for, say, 6 months. Vanity Fair took me about three, and while that's not normal, it's typical of the way I read books. Also, if my favorite author has a new book out, I don't want to be #60 on the list of people who get to read the one at the library, and I don't want to have to rush through it because someone else is waiting. And, hey, as a book buyer, I am supporting authors, which is nice.
