{the last twelve dollars}

One of my favourite things to get as a present is a Chapters gift card. I hoard them in my wallet, occasionally wandering the aisles of the book store as if I'm going to use them, but I never do. Never, that is, until I have collected enough that I can order a billion books all at once online (and in the process rack up so many Plum Points that I get to order even more free books). It's the best.

As an added bonus, Chapters does this thing where they ship each individual book that you order as soon as it's ready, so even if you order ten books on the same day they could, quite possibly, arrive all at different times. Which makes for a pretty darn magical week and has, in the past, done wonders for my relationship with the mail lady (edit: she might hate me, who knows, but I looooove her).

So I decided this morning that it was time.

I calculated my total gift card amount, added all of the books that are currently on my To Read list to my virtual shopping cart, and found that I still had a stray twelve dollars to spend. In the privacy of my living room, I did jazz hands and leaned back in my chair, trying to think of a worthwhile way to spend that extra bit of gift card glory. It's not an easy decision, you know? There are so many books. And a lot of them suck. And lots are quite good. But I don't want to spend my twelve dollars on those. I want to spend my twelve dollars on something that will fill up my head and wrench my gut and metaphorically glue itself to my fingertips until I've read every last word. Something memorable and weird and smart. Something, for lack of better words, great.

So that was how I came to be clicking around on goodreads, following links and reading reviews, when I somehow found myself reading the comments section under Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (I don't know how I got there. I was just clicking a lot).

I kind of thought that the comments on goodreads would be more intelligent and productive than the ones on YouTube. Maybe because I've never really used goodreads before today. Maybe because I have this weird notion that people who read things and who talk about reading things are going to have better online conversations than people who watch Taylor Swift music videos. I forfeit my notions.

I realize that the book being discussed is Jurassic Park. But still. The first comment on the page was this:

I didn't even notice Victor's eye patch until just a second ago.

But the point is not that. The point is: I'm probably not going to spend my twelve dollars on Jurassic Park. What was the last great book you read?