Libera Libris…free books…
What a novel concept.
Be prepared for the literature puns. They will pour out of me like that one tap faucet in the house you inherit from some long dead, seven greats grandparent or distant relative that redefines what the term "fixer-upper" actually means.
This blog, however, begins with these few opening words because I find myself seven days away from concluding my undergraduate course work. I could not be more thrilled. Four years and one part-time semester later (this ridiculous thing called a thesis paper) and I am almost done. Real life, however difficult, is so close, and I cannot wait for it to officially arrive.
Graduating has put me in a curious frame of mind, as I find myself unsure how long it will be before I go from two jobs to one "big girl" job--not by any means suggesting that working as a sales consultant for a bridal boutique and a customer service associate for a retail chain are not big girl jobs--but they are not. Not to me.
I interned under the online marketing director for a division of Random House this summer and firmly believe marketing/publicity/sales within the publishing world is where I am meant to be. If I can sell someone a $2000 gown in the space of two hours, I can sell the public a book, and with better tag lines than some of the ones I have seen floating around the industry [side note: comparing a book to Twilight does not make people want to read it and should avoid any further associations].
Working this summer, though, maintaining an online database, showed me how integral online marketing is to any good product and some of the best marketing comes not from the author or the publishing house and agent, but from the trial readers. People who are in love with the ebb and flow of the written word have swarmed the blogosphere offering their analysis of new releases, classics, underrated, and overrated alike. Publishing houses have responded in kind, offering readers willing to write about the books, advance copies in exchange for the ability to utilize reviews in marketing and publicity materials.
As a bibliophile, I see no better trade off. However, I refuse to jump into such a proposition without first knowing what I have missed. I do not know how some of you do it, but I am not great at balancing academia and free reading, and find that the past few years has put me woefully behind in the manner of all things concerning books and the stories there in produced.
This is where I will play catch-up. I have already begun emailing and messaging friends requesting a list of suggestions. I suspect the list will become gratuitous. One friend alone tonight gave me twenty-six suggestions, a combination of author names or series titles, which means that number, in reading material, is close to double that. One whole notebook page full already. I cannot wait to see what else comes, hopefully, pouring in over the next week.
On Monday, December 9th, I will provide the list of recommendations as they stand from each of my friends and will update them as more are offered and cross them off as they are read and reviewed. I will have them all written out and ready to be pulled, at random, from a Penn State mason jar, most likely. I was converted on October 12th, this year at the Penn State v. Michigan game, but that is a separate story completely.
I look forward to immersing myself in books again. I have been far too starved of culture for immeasurably too long.
If I know anything, I know two things: left-handers will rule in a post-apocalyptic regime and everyone needs to be a little bookish.
