Thursday, June 28, 2007

Booking Through Thursday: Desperation Reads

From Booking Through Thursday:

Today’s question is suggested by Carrie.

What’s the most desperate thing you’ve read because it was the only available reading material?

If it was longer than a cereal box or an advertisement, did it turn out to be worth your while?

I've been known to skim through telephone books in hotel rooms if I was hard up for reading. (The lawyer ads in the Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia telephone books are particularly entertaining.) Usually, though, my desperate times come when I'm in a doctor's or dentist's waiting room and forgot to bring a book to read. Then I read all of the women's magazines ("Ten Ways to Reduce Cellulite") or catch up with celebrity doings via People magazine.

I'd love to be able to say that on one of these hard-up occasions I picked up a novel I wouldn't have read otherwise and found it to be engrossing, but I can't think of a single instance when this has happened.

10 comments:

Daphne said...

Next time I'm in DC I"ll have to check out the lawyer ads in the phone book!!

Carla said...

Well, I read my first Georgette Heyer novel in a B&B when I hadn't got anything else to read, and was very pleasantly surprised! I'd had a mistaken impression of her books until then. I don't think it counts as really desperate, though.
Celebrity magazines in dentists' waiting rooms are probably the nearest I get to desperation reading, and usually I decide the health information posters are a better bet. Luckily my current dentist takes National Geographic :-)

Marianne Arkins said...

Phone books are one I haven't tried... I had no idea they were so entertaining!

Mine's up here.

Stephanie said...

Yep - Women's magazines. Any article about botox or how to improve your sex life seems pretty desperate to me. But at the dentist you have to wait so long you can usually get through a couple. Luckily I forget them as soon as they pass through my brain!

Rowena said...

Whoa, phone books huh? I can't say that I've read those yet...but all the others? Yeah, I'm so with you...=)

Happy BTT!

Susan Higginbotham said...

Thanks for stopping by, all!

Some years ago, I actually cut out one of the full-page lawyer ads from the Washington, D.C. yellow pages. It was a close-up of the lawyer himself, trying to look, I suppose, as if he were zealously looking after his clients' interest, but he had his mouth open in such a way that just begged to have a trout put into it. Hilarious.

Carla said...

"he had his mouth open in such a way that just begged to have a trout put into it."

Great image! Who needs Photoshop?

Gabriele Campbell said...

Some Scottish 'historical' romances in a B&B in Edinburgh. They were so bad it made me giggle all the way through the books.

Anonymous said...

Golf Digest in my former doctor's waiting room....yuck!

Susan Higginbotham said...

My ob-gyn has the worst selection of magazines I've ever seen. With a roomful of women, many of them pregnant, you'd think he of all people would have some women's and parenting magazines, but no. Nothing but the local business journal the last time I looked (which was a long time ago, because I learned my lesson and make absolutely certain I don't get caught without a book in his office).