Early Conversation Topic 3/21

[Jason]

I don't ever win any of the book giveaways that I enter, but as I was walking through a parking lot today, I found Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, binding broken with the cover barley hanging on. I'm kinda excited to read this book instead of someone else trashing it.

So, for an early conversation topic. Have you ever found a book? What condition was it in? Did you enjoy the book?

[Book Concierge]

I have found gems in cabins / houses that we've rented. Of course, I don't keep those ... I figure the owners stock the library to give their guests/tenants options for rainy days, so I leave them behind after reading them. And if I can't get them read before the vacation ends ... I make a note and get them from the library after I get back home.

[Joanne]

I have also found gems in vacation cabins. I also love Little Free Libraries-never know what you will find in those.

[Karin]

I've read books in holiday cabins, etc, when I was younger. I also found one at an Audubon Society location that I read while one of my kids was taking a writing class or else having writing tutoring (I hated teaching my kids writing while homeschooling so they took classes or tutoring from a fabulous woman once they got older.) It had to stay there, so I read it in the waiting room week by week.

[Robin P]

I started signing up for GR giveaways and I think I have won 3 in the last 4 months. The ones I have won are nonfiction or otherwise less known. Though I did win a copy of Babel before the publication date. But some of the books are by Emily Henry or Fredrick Backman, who certainly don't need my review. I don't understand why publishers would even submit books by famous authors like that as Giveaways.

I have found some books in Little Free Libraries, but of course that's what they are there for.

In the old days when I didn't always have multiple forms of books with me at all times, I sometimes borrowed a book from a friend I was staying with and finished it while I was there. Sometimes I finished a book I had brought and left that one for the friend.

At least once I read a very short book by sitting with it at Barnes & Noble or Borders and then I put it back on the shelf!

[Joanne]

Robin, publishing houses may have extra copies in their warehouse they are trying to get rid of and/or the author has a new book coming out and they want to put their name out there. A friend of mine who works in publishing told me that, when I asked her the same question.

In total since joining GR's in 2017, I have won 14 books. 3 turned into DNFs. I have one that I won in 2022 that I still have not read. I picked it up once and I was liking it, and then other books I was reading crowded it out. I should make a point to read it this year.

[Robin P]

Joanne wrote: "Robin, publishing houses may have extra copies in their warehouse they are trying to get rid of and/or the author has a new book coming out and they want to put their name out there. A friend of mi..."

You're right, the Giveaways are usually proofs/advance copies that can't be sold.

[Lyn]

It's been several years since I have won a goodreads give away, but I don't enter as many as I used to. Some I have won were definitely better than others, but it's always fun to win something~

A few years ago I found a book on my bookshelf that I have no idea where it came from. Maybe a Little Free Library or a Friends of the Library sale sometime. It was poetry, something I rarely read. I gave it a try and it was terrible. I mean absolutely awful. I finished it, I was hoping to find something that spoke to me in it. I left it in a Little Free Library. I hope the next person enjoyed it more than I did.

My husband has lost books in odd places. One time he left a book at the check in counter at the airport. We were already through security when he realized he had left it behind. Another time he was out in a favorite area hunting. He sat down by a tree and found one of his books sitting there! He hadn't been to that spot in a couple of weeks. That's one of those stories we still laugh about at our house. Believe it or not, the book was still in good shape and he brought it home. It's probably still on his bookshelf.

[Robin P]

I just received Sons and Daughters yesterday, which was a GR giveaway. It is a book written in Yiddish, in serial form, in the 1960's and '70's. A translation was in the works for years but an ending was only recently found. There is an article about it in this month's Atlantic magazine. I totally forgot I had put in for the Giveway.

[Jen]

Robin P wrote: "I started signing up for GR giveaways and I think I have won 3 in the last 4 months. The ones I have won are nonfiction or otherwise less known. Though I did win a copy of Babel bef..."

I used to do the giveaways, but never won anything, until they made it US only.

I've been given lots of books as presents but whether I like them or not very much depends on how well the person knows me. A colleague was much better at picking books than my sister for example.

[Theresa]

I am someone who leaves a book somewhere that I have finished, usually when traveling, that I hope someone will find, read, and enjoy. I can't recall ever finding a book somewhere, picking it up and taking it with me. I always have multiple books in some format with me, never feel the need to pick up some random book I find.

Like Lyn, it has been many years since I won a giveaway. I still enter one now and then.

[Karin]

Speaking of giveaways, that reminds me that I won that GR giveaway copy of Lady Tan’s Circle of Women that I still need to read! Just when I was thinking it had been so very long since I'd won something because I'd forgotten about it.

[Jason]

The only other time I have found and kept a book. At work, in the room where the delivery drivers check in, Lilac Girls was on the counter. I asked who was reading that. I was told it had been sitting there for months. They told me to take it. It's on my TBR so I did. I still haven't read it yet.