Tuesday, January 20, 2009

An Unexpected Apprentice

by Jody Lynn Nye

I'm good at buying food for dinner, but tend to forget that lunch doesn't appear out of thin air, so on the weekends we usually have to forage for food.  Which sounds much more rugged than it actually is.  I read various blogs where people write about their experiences either growing their own food, or actually foraging in the woods, and in some cases dumpsters, for food.  Us, we get hungry, we decide which restaurant to hand our money to.

The Saturday in question we had a craving for Mexican food, so we headed off to Fiesta Del Mar, which means we drove our car.  And it seemed a little wasteful to have driven for just lunch, so we wandered around downtown for some window shopping, which almost immediately turned into actual shopping at Books Inc.

The title, despite the less than fabulous font, caught my eye.  I think I like the word unexpected. Not generically.  Generically I like the word plethora, because it feels good in my mouth as I say it, and because if just seems full of promise and options, and, oh, I just like the word.  (I mean, this is a blog about why I read the books I read, not a defend your vocabulary favorites site.  It's not like most people even have a favorite word).

Where was I?  Oh, right, I was attracted to the word unexpected in the title, because, um, I just was.  And the back cover listed the hero as female, which is no longer unexpected (anyone remember sci fi in the 70's?  If so you might understand why all these years later I'm still happy when a woman has a lead role).  

There were thousands of other books in the shop that day.  I'm not sure why I ended up with this one.  Today I probably wouldn't have picked this one out.  Not a reflection of the writing (this isn't a review site), just that some days books are like lunch food... some days you want sushi, and other days you want anything but.  No real reason for your choice, except that you were hungry, and had to pick something.  And yes, some days I am hungry for a book.  

Many many days, actually.

No comments:

Post a Comment