Why it's hard to answer the questions about how I pick books to read
A few weeks ago, we were watching the TV show "Perception," and at one point the lead character, a schizophrenic psychology professor played by Eric McCormack, is reading a book. But the way he's holding it, it seems -- to me, at least -- that he's holding it in a way that it must be noticed, like McCormack or the show's director really likes this book, or its author, or both, and wants to subtly promote it. Not an unlikely guess, as sly marketing tricks and product placement are often used to counter people using their DVRs to skip commercials. So we froze the image (nice trick, making us use the DVR to *find* your product) and saw the title: "A Visit From the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan.
So we promptly went to the library website, found that it was indeed a real book, and available, so we ordered it.
Thus I started on the audiobook (with a little looking at the dead-tree version, especially for the "slides" chapter) knowing nothing about it, what it was about, or even that it had won a Pulitzer Prize. And I finished it today; I really liked it.
And now it occurs to me that what's written above sounds like something that would be a part of one of the stories in the book.
So we promptly went to the library website, found that it was indeed a real book, and available, so we ordered it.
Thus I started on the audiobook (with a little looking at the dead-tree version, especially for the "slides" chapter) knowing nothing about it, what it was about, or even that it had won a Pulitzer Prize. And I finished it today; I really liked it.
And now it occurs to me that what's written above sounds like something that would be a part of one of the stories in the book.