The Fault in Our Book-Buying

That title sounded a lot better in my head.

So I was tossing around ideas in my brain, and I came up with this: How do you know if you're buying a good book? Um, yeah. It's not a good idea, but it can be answered, which is more than I can say for my other questions, like: "Would it be possible that humans came from water creatures?" or "Would it be possible to attach wings to said humans and be capable of flight?"

Anyways, the answer to how you know you're buying a good book or not is simple. You don't know. It's horrible.

One of the great and terrible deeds in reading (other than dog-earing pages and judging only by covers) is skimming. But why? I mean, skimming is... is okay. (This is my way of saying that I do it a lot.) It helps you get an idea of what the book is about. And often times, I read the first chapter before buying a book that I like the look of. I'm poor, therefore, I am picky. Skimming helps when you can't decided whether or not to pick a book, okay? Just don't skim to close to the ending of the book. That's... that's just bad.

Another thing: Do I believe my friends' recommendation or not? 

This is big for me, because my sister is constantly shoving books in my face and a lot of what I get around to reading are books that she has recommended. Do I always love them? Um, absolutely not. I hate some of them. This has resulted in many attempts at ending my life by said sister. But I do love lots. 

Which basically means that none of my questions are getting answered and this is pointless.

But, oh, the dreaded question of: This book has a ton of hype but it doesn't sound like something I'd love. Should I get it?

I have read many books because of hype. Legend by Marie Lu, Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, Angelfall by Susan Ee, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, the Mara Dyer books... the list goes on. Most of them I have loved, but only because I was staying in a genre I was comfortable with. The only book I read that had a ton of hype and wasn't dystopian or something similar, is The Fault in Our Stars. (Which I watched last night. It was sad. *sniffles at the memory*) Some have been awesome, and some have been not-awesome, which here means: terrible-- at least, in my opinion.

So the answer to my question is still that books cannot be judged merely by skimming or covers or friends' recommendations. But I'm totally open to yours.

Since I am on my fall break, I have a ton of free time now. Free time I would love to spend reading-- except that I don't know what to read. So, if you have any books that you have read recently and fell in love with, tell me about them. Only if you want to, of course. It's not like I'm forcing you. *wiggles eyebrows*