Time for TGIF...

As much as I love Fridays it scares me to realise another week has gone by, especially as it's now February. Still, this summer is shaping up to be a good one for the UK with London 2012 and the Queen's Jubilee celebrations. For now though we've got to get through this cold snap. It is really very chilly out (at least for a soft southerner like me) but without the benefit of snow. At least the last couple of days have been bright and crisp rather than rainy though.

Over the last week I have read and reviewed The Mountain of Gold by J D Davies, and was pleased to welcome the Curiosity Quills Blog Tour. If you haven't already read Lisa Gus' guest post on the serialisation of novels take a look, it's well worth a look. I finished another book last night which I shall review later, A Storms Hits Valparaiso by David Gaughran. I loved his short stories If You Go Into the Woods and Transfection so I was keen to see a full length work by David. For now suffice it to say I really enjoyed it.

Now onto GReads TGIF Friday meme. This week the question is:
Book Appeal: When you're browsing goodreads, the library, or another blogger's reviews, what grabs your attention to make you want to read it?

It used to be that in the good old days (or bad old days depending on how you look at it) when I was browsing in a book store because many of the books were shelved with the spine rather than the cover facing out for me it was very much down to the blurb to catch my attention. It needed to be short and snappy but conveying enough information to give me an idea of what I was letting myself in for now.

Now, when you browse for books online you tend to get a thumbnail of the cover and, despite the old saying, I do make judgements based on that. If a cover looks cheap, dated or too amateur I tend to assume the contents may not be as professional as I would like. When you have so many options to choose from you have to use something to filter your options so as the first impression the cover does play a part. That said if the blurb isn't any good the cover doesn't matter, and if the blurb is great I'll forgive a rubbish cover (assuming I look at the blurb)

I'm not too picky about the genre, I'll read most things, but there are times when I fancy some light humour, probably after a run of serious novels, or a short story collection maybe if I've read a few long books in a row. A bunch of good reviews that say why a reader enjoyed the book definitely helps.

Whew, that wasn't meant to be the start of an essay....

Thanks for hopping by, and have a great weekend.