(This blog post is not about Valentine’s Day. I just wanted to make that clear, cuz you know, everything else on the planet is about V-Day right now and there is the word ‘heart’ in my title and it would a be a totally natural thing to assume and so on… Not that I have anything against V-Day really, but I’m more of an every-day-should-be-the-celebration-of-your-love type of girl and… I’ll shut up now, cuz like I said, this post really isn’t about Valentine’s Day.)
So.
I may have mentioned before that I am a romance novel fan (= read ‘addict’) and, being one of those, I realize it is shameful for me to admit this: I have not read J.D Robb’s In Death series. Technically, the In Death series is not romance - they are futuristic crime novels, stocked in the crime section of the library - but, we all know who J.D Robb really is and it is certainly shameful for a romance fan to admit to not having read the Nora Roberts’ Eve-Roarke love stories.
My problem is this: I tend to get obsessed with book series. I steer clear of novels belonging to a series unless I am able to purchase or borrow all of them and read them in the right order. It has so happened in the past that I borrow a book from the library without realizing it belongs to a series. If it is the first of the series it’s okay – I usually find a way to get hold of the others (or I don’t bother if I’m not that into it). If the book is not the first of the series (and I don’t hate it), it drives me nuts to realize that it’s part of a series! Because then I feel left out. There are characters and back story that I missed out on, and even if I do get a brief explanation of events past in the later book, my reading experience feels incomplete.
When I first read Twilight (Yes, I am a fan. Go right ahead and judge me.), I was living in Tanzania, where there is no Amazon or Waterstones or equivalent for me to could get the books I want. I was literally losing my mind, I wanted to get a hold of New Moon so bad. There was excerpt of New Moon at the end of the copy of Twilight that I read (borrowed from a friend), just the first chapter and it enticed me further until I. COULD. NOT. WAIT! I went to India a few months later and bought all four books first chance I got.
A friend gave me Nora Roberts’ Tears of the Moon as a present and I actually kept it, unread, for two years before I could get Jewels of the Sun and Heart of the Sea and then read them all in the right order (funnily enough I liked Tears… the best of the three).
So yes, I have a tad bit of OCD when it comes to book series.
I was wary of starting the In Death series because from what I knew of it (Futuristic! Mystery! Epic love story between female cop and super-hot super-rich Irish guy!) I knew I would LOVE it. There are forty-something books in the series = not so easy to track down in libraries or buy on Amazon with my first-job-out-of-Uni pay check. I kept hearing about it in the various romance reader blogs that I frequent, but I somehow kept restraining myself from grabbing Naked in Death at the library.
And then… Last week I did a search of Judith McNaught on the Dear Author website (I was trying to decide if I wanted to buy A Kingdom of Dreams – still haven’t made up my mind) and I found this article on Memorable Romance Book Moments. One of the readers commenting talked about a scene in Naked in Death where Roarke keeps Eve’s jacket button in his pocket. Now, even though I am not a big fan of Valentine’s Day, I am what one might politely refer to as a ‘hopeless romantic’ (I prefer the term ‘hopeful romantic’) and the button thing made me incredibly curious. I finally gave in to temptation and picked Naked… at the library last week.
I read it on Monday. On Tuesday I searched my library’s online catalogue and found they have the second book Glory in Death and, as luck would have it, they were open until 8 pm that night, so I could go grab it after work.
The thing about my library is that it’s situated inside of the mall on the high street. I have only ever used the mall entrance, but I have been aware that there is another entrance from the street. On Tuesday at 7 pm, the mall tends to be closed. I walked all around the humungous building but every single door was locked. I walked round and round, freezing my (ahem) backside off in my inappropriate-for-the-weather tights, and finally gave up and got on the bus home.
And I did not get Glory in Death!
You might wonder why I’m worked up about this. I can simply wait for the weekend and pick it up, it’s only a matter of three more days. I’ll tell you why I’m worked up: I’m going out of town to visit my sister this weekend and so my next library trip will not be happening until next weekend. A whole week and a half away!
You see why I tried so hard not to succumb to the lure of the In Death series all these years?
Sigh.
It’s gonna be a long ten days.
(Although, I did check the online catalogue of my sister’s library and they have Glory in Death. Question is, do I give in to my obsession and get Book 2? Or will that result in the obsession spiralling wildly out of control so that I buy the next one and then the next, and eventually end up spending my rent money on all 40-something novels and then reading them holed up in my loft without food or sleep or sunlight and losing my job, leading my sister to admit me to a psychiatric institution where I spend the rest of my days muttering random facts and dialogues from romance novels?)
