My forray into paperbacks sold at the wal-mart store

Desperate to read something, ANYTHING, I picked up these two books at the store yesterday. Yes, I actually BOUGHT books to read, books that I'd not only never,ever read before but also fiction books. I tend not to purchase a fiction book unless I am really,really,really sure that I love it. I love books. I love to own books. I also love to read books. If I had to buy and consequently, keep every single book that I read, well, we'd be drowning (even more) in books.

So I usually just check fiction books out from the library and if its something I love and I do mean I have to LOVE it and its something I check out more than once and read over and over again, I'll usually than go ahead and buy it. I'm thinking through my fiction book collection and right now the only ones that I own are "Jane Eyre", "Anna Karinina", "Lord of the Rings", "Little Women" and the complete set of "Little House on the Prairie". Oh, what a happy and joyous day that was when I bought myself the entire set of Little House books. I was a 30 year old grown-up who had finally fulfilled one of her childhood wishes!!!

Anyhoos, you can kinda see how my tastes in reading run. So the other day, I was bored, wandering around hell,ummm I mean, WAL-mart, the library was closed for the day and I had a spare $20 just burning a hole in my pocket.

I came home with these...
It was a best seller, the title and bookcover intrigued me and when I was reading the little blurb-ees in the front and came across
"...resembles stealth hits like "The Giants House"......
and
"...bearing one of the happiest endings you will ever read..."

I knew I wanted to read it. I loved the book "The Giants House" about a librarian who falls in love with a boy/man who suffers from that disease that makes people grow HUGE. Gigantism, I think. I was working at a library at the time I read it and I loved it. I also love happy endings, but then again,who doesn't?

Ok, don't shoot me. This one I picked up because it was an Oprah Book Club book. I know, I know, what can I say? Other than, once in a while Oprah does choose some really good books. Son#1 is currently working through "Pillars of the Earth" after seeing it mentioned on Oprah. I'd read that one way back when, again,working at the library and it is a really, REALLY good read.

One summer, Oprah read "Anna Karenina" and it was directly because of that, that I was able to, finally, conquer Tolstoy. My dearly loved Mother-In-Law had passed away in March and we took a trip to Myrtle Beach, SC in her honor. We were all supposed to go on the trip together, but she passed away far too early for us to do so.

We drove from Indiana. There was a bookmark that you could print off of the website that had the cast of characters on it. I'd never been able to keep all those names straight until that ingenious little scrap of paper. I read that book constantly that week, by the side of the pools at the hotels we stayed at on the trip down (Gatlinburg Tennessee on the way down, Lexington, Kentucky on the way home), I read it every day on the beach, wiggling my toes into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time (I was,what,34 years old before I ever saw the ocean), I read it,alone, out on the balcony of our rented condo in the evenings. The condo had not only cable, but PREMIUM cable channels and I think my kiddos were more excited about that than they were about swimming in the ocean.

I'm thinking if I like "Love In The Time of Cholera" than maybe I'll tackle "100 Years of Solitude" next.