How do you choose a book?

How do you choose a book if you haven't already received a recommendation?

I find I am quite successful just by looking for a title and a cover that appeals to me! Then I just read the first page and if I like that, then I will read the book. I never read the blurb if I can help it because that gives away the start of the story. Similarly with introductions; I always leave those until I have finished the book because I don't want to be given any hint as to how the story progresses.

This would never work with a film of course! That must be why they need trailers ... although I wish they told you rather less of the story in the trailer. You need to attract people in though; it must be a difficult balancing act.

In which your bibliophile is bloody but unbowed

Monday's reading was Jodi Picoult's Plain Truth. I am so pleased to have started reading Jodi Picoult, whom I avoided for years because I thought she wrote about child abuse and other "issues", and I never enjoy issue-driven fiction. Happily I was wrong about this great author. Certainly she does use contemporary situations and dilemmas as her starting point but she also tells a gripping story with believeable characters. Plain Truth is centred on the Amish community in Pennsylvania. Images of the Amish are now familiar to most of us, but Picoult demolishes some misconceptions as well as teasing out the mysterious story of Katie Fisher and her baby. Well worth reading.

Tuesday was book-free as I managed to spend the time in A&E after fainting and smacking my face into the road. I could have done with a book actually, after I felt better. Quite rightly the staff were busy dealing with more urgent cases so we had to do a lot of waiting around. Surely your intrepid reader should have had a book in her handbag at such a time!

Wednesday I spent recovering and then reading Val McDermid's Wire in the Blood. This was a new author for me. I generally like crime novels especially when they concern the psychology of criminals so this one about the profiling of a serial killer should have been ideal for me. However although I enjoyed it overall, for me there were too many characters, some of whom were dropped from the story part of the way through. None of the characters seemed particularly sympathetic either.

Day 50; Book 47