These are thrilling days for holiday book-givers. Why, this lovely publication itself told us only recently that we're buying up books as fast as if we were being told by QVC that there were only sixteen left at this price and that once they were gone, they'd be gone.
Of course, that's probably true about books -- once they're all Kindled or Nooked or Droided or whatever other vaguely sexually-molesty-kind of word can be applied to automated reading -- they'll be gone all right. Never to return in a "snows of yesteryear" or in an extinct Przewalski's Horse kind of way, depending on your choice of analogies.
But, according to the Huffington Post's "What We're Buying This Christmas," we've also learned that any book with the word "pursuit" in the title is bound to hit the bestseller list, and that the letters and early writings of dead white men still sell.
Wow, am I relieved!
Just kidding -- sort of! But, seriously, it is great to give books as gifts. We should especially sweep up new titles by living authors, since somebody should be able to make a dime in this business.
And you know why, right? Because the alternative is that we'll be left reading only those books cranked out by self-published authors. Sure, some self-published authors are terrific and I am quite, quite sure I'll be able to think of a name very soon. But too many of them are simply folks who can afford to have their thoughts typeset even when they cannot write what is called a "Sentence."
Thinking about bad books by authors who can't write is what got me started; I began wondering about exactly what titles might not be moving off the shelves this season.
I offer, therefore, a few thoughts concerning those orphaned (but not Orhan Pamuk) -- and wholly imaginary -- volumes below in Gina's List of Books We're Not Buying This Christmas:
- The Crying Woman's Guide to Handgun Safety
Okay, so I might still be tempted to purchase this last title, even though I know better.
Isn't the holiday season all about nurturing a sense of optimism even when common sense tells you to abandon hope? And isn't publishing about the same thing?