The Broadening Your Horizons Department

When I first started this blog it was more like my online diary. Some personal stuff, some library stuff, and the occasional book stuff tossed in as an afterthought. Over the years the blog as evolved into mostly romance novel stuff with personal stuff tossed in. If one was stumbling across the Bat Cave for the first time, they'd probably think all I do is sit around reading and buying romance novels all day.

Um yeah, no. Romance novels are my passion, but are actually a small part of my job. The key to any good library is diversity in the book collection. I always tell librarians they "need a little bit of everything" in their collections. So I'm constantly reading up on books, across all genre ties. And every now and then I come across one that sounds really intriguing. Like this one, How To Buy A Love Of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson. Yes, I know it sounds like Young Adult Fiction, but it's not. This one is being marketed as adult, all the way.

Description:

To Carley Wells, words are the enemy. Her tutor’s innumerable SAT flashcards. Her personal trainer’s “fifty-seven pounds overweight” assessment. And the endless reading assignments from her English teacher, Mr. Nagel. When Nagel reports to her parents that she has answered “What is your favorite book” with “Never met one I liked,” they decide to fix what he calls her “intellectual impoverishment.” They will commission a book to be written just for her—one she’ll have to love—that will impress her teacher and the whole town of Fox Glen with their family’s devotion to the arts. They will be patrons— the Medicis of Long Island. They will buy their daughter The Love Of Reading.

Impossible though it is for Carley to imagine loving books, she is in love with a young bibliophile who cares about them more than anything. Anything, that is, but a good bottle of scotch. Hunter Cay, Carley’s best friend and Fox Glen’s resident golden boy, is becoming a stranger to her lately as he drowns himself in F. Scott Fitzgerald, booze, and Vicodin.

When the Wellses move writer Bree McEnroy—author of a failed meta-novel about Odysseus’ failed journey home through the Internet—into their mansion to write Carley’s book, Carley’s sole interest in the project is to distract Hunter from drinking and give them something to share. But as Hunter’s behavior becomes erratic and dangerous, she finds herself increasingly drawn into the fictional world Bree has created, and begins to understand for the first time the power of stories—those we read, those we want to believe in, and most of all, those we tell ourselves about ourselves. Stories powerful enough to destroy a person. Or save her.

See, doesn't that sound great? OK, I think it sounds great. And guess what? The author has a contest going on for your chance to win a copy of this May hard cover release. A free hard cover book? It just doesn't get much better than that. So head on over to the author's web site and submit your story on how reading saved you. Three winners will be featured on the author's web site and will receive an autographed copy of the book.

As for me? I'm adding this to one to my reading list.