Novel Haul

For someone who just spent the last 5 months being force fed information at an alarming rate, you would think that last thing i would want to do is touch a book. Noo......being the weirdo that i am, one of the things i do after every exam is this.........

I go on a novel haul. I usually go after every block but I didn't do that this year after any of the blocks because i was fighting a battle. Anyhoodle, i had some from last year, about 10 that i hadn't read. I managed to read 3 or 4 during by back and forth trips home for spring break. I went to Walmart yesterday and the store i get my books is beside it. I had no intention of getting any book but i couldn't help myself. I then decided to just get 2 books since i am majorly broke. Hmm....ok! Here are the two books i got.

Can you tell what my favorite genre is?  Total cost for all 9 books = $7.59

Thing is, the books are .79 cents each. I stopped buying new books years ago because
a) I'm broke
b)I read so much and so fast, there was no way i could afford to keep up my reading habit if i was buying new books at $6.99 a book.

I did buy all the Harry Potter books for $20 a book on they day they each came out. I didn't care they were $20, i just wanted to read the book. Funny how i stopped buying new books, I had gone to Walden books at the mall and bought 2 books for about $13  and then that same week i found out about buying used books from thrift stores. I took myself to Value Village and bought 14 books for the same amount. That's where the madness started. Come to find out that Good Will was cheaper than Value Village (which i thought was dirt cheap) but i only went there once because Value Village was closer.

I can't tell you the madness i used to perform back in Atlanta. I would go to the store and fill a cart with books (I swear). I ended up spending close to $50 one time, you can imagine how many books there were. I bet the cashier thought i was crazy or i sold the books or something. I had 2 bookcase FULL of books, double stacked. I would read them, donate and go back for more. Hey. Some people are into shoes and clothes, i love to read.

I found some pictures i took when i was packing to go to med school. I was going to donate the rest of my books, but my mom wanted me to leave them, so i did.

Bookcase 1 (you can't see the lower level which has books too)

Books to Donate

Books on top Bookcase 2.  I don't have a picture of Bookcase 2 which was bigger than Bookcase 1

The funny thing is 90% of the book i read are historical romance novels (in case you couldn't tell by looking at the books. I used to read every genre voraciously when i was in Nigeria. I even joined a book club where all my pocket money went because you had to pay to rent the books. Junior year when i started get really busy with school after i came here (work, research, full time classes), i had to chose my leisure reading carefully and I knew i would always enjoy a historical romance, so that's what i ended up going for and before you know it, I because 100% into them. Little ol' feminist me. SMH. I'm not thinking of feminism when i read these books, but there was one particular one, i vividly remember flinging across the room because it was so STUPID. I couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Besides historical romance, which is my genre of choice, i read other things but nothing specific. When i was still in undergrad we had a browsing section were they had contemporary novels and i would always get novels from there. As busy as i was in senior year of undergrad, i still managed to read one or two novels a week, mostly on the train going back and forth from school. Med school has brought all that leisure reading to a grinding HALT. I still manage but the state of my leisure reading these days is abysmal.The last time i went on a novel haul after a block exam last year, i couldn't find historical romance novels that i liked so i decided to do Fern Michaels. I had read a couple of his books in undergrad.

I still haven't gotten around to reading these

I actually bought about 7 Fern Michael books, but i took 2 home when i went on spring break and didn't see the need to bring them back since i already read them. I have read most of John Grisham's books by the way. I couldn't remember if i had read The Brethren, so i bought it again just in case. I tried to get into Stephen King. My imagination is too vivid to do horror movies or horror books. I can't it. I still remember It though. That book scared me shitless but i still finished reading it.

So i've laid my madness for you guys to see. Don't judge me harshly. I'm really not a nerd, i just have nerdish tendencies. Ok fine, i'm a nerd. Just a little. Small. Tiny. Itty bitty. You couldn't tell by looking at me though :) One of my older sisters loves shoes and she has a walk in customized shoe closet (no lie). That's her thing. This is my thing......although med school is trying really hard to take it away. When i was still in Nigeria maybe 10 years ago, someone asked me how many books i had read because anytime he saw me, i was always with a book. Back then, my answer was over a thousand and that was without exaggeration. Now, i wouldn't even bother estimating. I no longer have a clue.

I used to write too.....surprise, surprise. I was known in  JSS for my "novels". People used to wait for me to write my stories so they could read it. No joke. We were in boarding school and jobless. I wrote my first story (i can't call that a novel) in Primary 5. Most of my stories were set in Nigeria. My favorite book of all time still remains The Concubine, by Elechi Amadi. Anyway, the last time i wrote anything was 2008. I can't blame Med school for taking that away from me. I blame TRYING to get into med school for that. I feel my creative juices are dried up and i don't even bother anymore. The only things i write these days are Lamentations....lol. I'm serious. I might share some of them with you guys one day.

I think this reading thing runs in families because i'm not the only one who loves to read in my family. I have only one sister who doesn't like to read. My 16 yr old niece is just like me, if not worse and she's been into reading since she was little. My nephew reads too. My brother used to read a lot and write also. He has won awards for his short stories and poems. No joke. 2 in high school and one in undergrad. We both submitted stories for our undergrads yearly publication and of course his story was picked and mine wasn't. Yet, i taught that sucker how to read :)

Ok, this post is long enough. I hereby relieve u all of your reading duties. Toodles!

P.S I made a video of my testimony but now i don't want to put it up. See wahala. I promised, so i will deliver. Soon. I just have to psych myself up and pray that you guys can tolerate the sight of my ugly face :)