I joined BookBub maybe about a year ago??? It offers ebooks, ranging from free to $2.99. You give them your interests (historical romance, biographies, true crime, etc.), and they send you an email every day with about 3 or 4 titles.
I’m just the sucker they’re looking for. I’m going to estimate that I buy about six books a month. I could easily check, but am too scared to know the truth. I would say about 90 percent of the titles are garbage, some of which I’ve bought. If the book is free, do not buy.
One thing I learned form BookBub is that there are a LOT of series. (Post-Human, Wild Hearts, The Chances, Sandy Cove, creepily The Girl in the Box, etc., etc.) The first book I read from the service was from the Spademan series, which was a fun read — in the future the well-to-do live in a suspended state; Spademan kills ’em for a fee.
But I’ve read some great books because of BookBub; titles I wouldn’t have necessarily gotten if they weren’t so darn cheap.
Currently, I’m William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, not what I thought it would be like. I’ve downloaded Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn and Halperin and Heilemann’s Game Change and a couple books by Dennis Lehane and Alice Hoffman.
Books I’ve enjoyed include Masters of Doom about the guys who created the video game Doom; The Billionaire’s Vinegar, about wine fraud (this one was a Memphis cameo); the Agatha Christie book At Bertram’s Hotel; Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter; A Night to Remember about the Titanic; Booker Prize winner Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively; and Pulitzer Prize winner A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.
