Tuesday, April 30, 2013

What's in a Word? - This One Goes to #11

BACON

Today's Top Ten Tuesday Topic is "Top Ten Words/Topics That Instantly Make Me Buy/Pick Up A Book."  If perchance this is your first experience with Top Ten Tuesday, you can find more information here.

When I was an irresponsible teenager child, there was a game we used to play called "Never Have I Ever."  If you've never heard of it, the rules were fairly simple - you would form a circle of chairs, one less in number than the number of participants.  The remaining person would then have to come up with a statement beginning "Never have I ever."  Anyone who had done this thing would then have to move to a new seat, while at the same time, the person in the center was trying to take one of theirs.  Those who likewise have not done this thing get a free pass for the round and remain seated.  Once all the seats are filled, there is hopefully a new person in the middle and play continues.

Now, there is a reason for me bringing up this game, and you may have guessed it already...

"Never have I ever bought a book because of a word or topic printed on the cover or within its pages."

If we were playing the game right now, I wonder how many others wouldn't get out of their chairs? I mean, it seems a fairly logical thing to me not to buy a book merely because a word caught your eye - flip through a book to see if you're interested, certainly, but not buy.  Say, for example, that you are walking through a bookstore and you spot a book called "Bacon".  Now, you may go to pick up the book, only to find that it is actually written by a vegetarian and is full of pictures of sad piglets.

This probably wouldn't be what you had in mind.

Therefore, here is my list of "Top Ten Words/Topics that Pique My Interest when Browsing Books."

1. Bacon - Do I need a reason? It's BACON!

2. History - For most of my life, I have been fascinated by history, so anything with this in the title will at least get a glance, especially those books about early European history or pre-revolution America, though books on the Civil Rights Movement rank fairly highly as well.

3. Mythology - AKA History that People Made Up to Make it More Interesting

4. Ireland/Irish/Gaelic - As my pen name might indicate to those of you familiar with the name, I'm Irish.  And by Irish, I mean I'm American of mostly Irish descent, so I'm trying to make up for the bit of me that isn't (I kid... somewhat)

5. Barbecue - It will become quickly apparent that I was hungry when I came up with this list, so my list may be somewhat biased.

6. Dessert - See?

7. Military/Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force - While I'm not much of a military buff, I do like books about them, especially the ones with photos and diagrams.

8. Fantasy - Most of my time at bookstore is spent wandering the science fiction/fantasy sections (or the used books, which are always a treasure).  My attention used to be primarily on the sci-fi, but has of late switched over to fantasy, as is evidenced by some of my previous lists.

9. Comics - While readings through the comics on a Sunday afternoon has its own charm, I've always preferred the collections.  Stories that would take weeks to play out in the paper can be seen all at once as a whole, and there's always those ones you missed or forgot about to look forward to.

10. Sale - What can I say?  A good bargain might make me consider a book I wouldn't otherwise buy.  After all, if I don't like it, I'm not too far in the hole as a result.

Bonus 11. Out-of-Print - Rare books!

There you have it!  This one's a fairly easy one (unless you procrastinate to look at cats, as I did), so I invite you to post your own lists in the comments below, or the link to your blog post so I (and my handful of readers) can read it there.

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