Combo

How do you decide the books to buy?

The cover? The title? The review? The author? A combination, perhaps?

For most, I think it would be a mixed combo: perhaps author and review.

I was browsing Borders for Henry Mintzberg's Strategy Safari today, failing any headway that I made haste to the fiction racks instead.

Who am I kidding: I haven't even read David Owen's Creative People Must Be Stopped which I bought a few weeks back.

Anyway, I made way to authors with the W surname and there it was: Sarah Winman's A Year of Marvelous Ways.

Having read Star's review on the book, my curiousity was piqued and (TQVM Borders for NOT plastic wrapping the novels) I flipped through the pages.

The writing was in fact enchanting.

They were poetic and yet flowing; and even though it wasn't something which would hook me to read cover to end in one sitting, I toyed with the idea of buying it.

The I saw the price: at RM69.90, A Year of Marvelous Ways was easily double the typical Stephen King's crap horror vintages which I would not hesitate to fork money out notwithstanding the literary critics review.

Was it the dreaded exchange rate at work? Will the comics be similarly jaw drooping expensive in the very near future?

Is reading going to be a snobbish, elite activity?

I dread.