Need more memory
One of the downsides to e-books is that there’s no cover. You can’t read the blurbs from other others. You can’t read the back cover of the book (or the inside flap of the dust jacket) to see what it’s about. Where you bought it from (like Amazon or wherever) has a description, and I guess you could go back there to look at it, but I never do (or it’s not convenient when I think about it), and that doesn’t tell me everything I need to know about why I decided to buy it.
I don’t do a lot of impulse e-book buying. I usually get a recommendation from somewhere (a tweet, comments on someone’s blog, an actual person talking to me in actual real life), and then I add it to my Amazon wish list. My Amazon wish list is more of a reminder list for myself, and Amazon added a feature not too long ago that lets you add comments to individual items. I can add a book to my list and add a note that says “from Bloggess commenters” or “saw in bookstore” or “tweet from Rainbow Rowell”, and when I go back to buy it, I have some context for how it ended up on my list, and I can make the decision about whether or not buy it based on some information.
I run into a problem when I see a tweet (or whatever) where someone is recommending a book and it’s on sale. Like, some crazy-low amount ($.99 or $1.99) that I can’t resist. When that happens, I just buy it and download it to my Kindle app. But I’m not reading many Kindle books lately, and even if I were, I’m usually in the middle of one, so I’m not going to read this new book right away, and now I don’t have any notes on it. Who recommended it? What sounded interesting about it? Do I even want to read this random book with the completely unfamiliar title by an author whose name doesn’t even ring a bell? Months later (or some period of time that is long enough for me to forget those details (an hour)), I’ll go back to my Kindle and not recognize ANY of the titles on it. What’s “Inertia” and why did I buy it? What’s it about? Who told me about it? And when it’s not good (like that one – the writing is bad and the author (and editor) should feel bad), I would really like to know how I heard about it because just maybe I won’t trust that person’s recommendations anymore. Unfortunately, that information (which existed only fleetingly in my brain to begin with) is gone forever.
This latest experience with that one book (and the sequel that I bought and read ANYWAY) might teach me to use on my many note/list apps and try to keep better track. It’s (sadly) too late for the books that are sitting on my Kindle right now.