or, rather, bite-sized pieces of books. I recently discovered that our public library is plugged into a service that will deliver 5 minute sections of various books directly into my emailbox. Thrilled with this discovery, I delightedly signed up for 4 or 5 categories. Now, except for textbooks, I have never tried to read 4 or 5 books at the same time. I pick up one book and, generally, devour it whole before starting the next. (If I find I keep putting it down, I used to feel obliged to force myself through it thinking it might improve by the end. It rarely did. These days, I stop reading it altogether - I don't have enough time to read to waste it on books I am not enjoying or characters I don't give a rat's bahooty about.)
Somehow, when I signed up for these 4 - 5 little daily book bites, it didn't occur to me that I would, essentially, be reading 4-5 books at a time. I have news for me: it's not working! I just don't have enough RAM left in my head to keep track of that many plots.
Also, what I didn't realize, is that you only get a week's worth of book before they switch to another one - a mere tease!! This makes sense, of course, as it's a library marketing ploy. It is, however, frustrating. And effective in its purpose. I'll be heading to the library tomorrow to check out a copy of Monica Pradhan's The Hindi-Bindi Club.
Go figure.
5 comments:
AHAH!
I knew there had to be a drawback to it...you had me hooked from the beginning..Thinnking that I could read a book little by little. Sigh. back to the waiting stash!
Heh... trying to get your mind off of the Twilight series by bombarding yourself with new reading material? :)
It is a good marketing ploy. Perhaps you can save the e-mails from the books, then read one string of e-mails at a time so you are only following one plotline?
That second paragraph - that is exactly what I was thinking. I can do two at a time, but not 5. And this is the very first time in my life I have heard the term "library marketing ploy". You have created a new terminology, I think! The whole idea is shocking....I'll be okay in a few minutes.... :)
I think their actually are services that DO send you an entire book chapter by chapter, but you're right about this one -- it is simply a Library Marketing Ploy. But it worked, right? ;-) It got you to want to go to the library and check it out so you can read the rest of the book. We librarians can be sneaky like that. ;-)
Having said that, I can see such a service backfiring to some degree too. Many people might read the tease and simply think "Yes, I want to read the rest of that book", but simply buy it from Amazon rather than go to the library. One would hope if a person signed up for the service FROM the library, they are a library user who would mostly be inclined to go check out the book at the library, but you never know.
Oops. Typo in my last post that I can't correct. I meant THERE are services, not THEIR. Duh!
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