Carolyn's Guide To Quickly Dealing With Book Samples

I love my kindle. Yes I love the feel and smell of real books but you can't take 12 books on holiday with you. Well you can but it's a hassle. One of the things I love most about the kindle is that every book has an option to download a sample chapter or two before buying, it's a great way to try books out. However it has the downside of being really easy to end up with too many samples and not enough real books. I had around 200 sample books on my kindle, leaving possibly fascinating histories of the mushroom or the orange uninvestigated. This may sound like not a big deal but I don't have 500 days to read samples, there are actual books to read and I'm behind on my Goodreads reading challenge, 8 books behind and that just won't do.

With 71 samples left I have perfected my art.

1) Go through them deleting ones you were dumb to download in the first place. I hate military histories, what was I thinking when I thought I was going to read 5?

2) Delete books you know you're going to buy anyway. I don't need to read a sample of a Terry Pratchett book. I will buy anything that man writes.

3) Skip the introduction or preface. It is written in a different style to the rest of the book. You might hate the introduction yet love the book and vis versa. It just wastes time. If you end up buying or borrowing the whole book read it then.

4) Don't put too much weight on the first part of the first chapter. It's often written to entice the reader and may not reflect the actual flow of the book.

5) Read more for style than content. I hate nonfiction books written like novels so this is really what I'm looking for. If I end up reading the whole thing then I want to pay attention to what the author is saying but in deciding if I'm going to buy it I'm more interested in how the author says it.

6) And most important, once you've decided you want to read more don't hit "Buy it now", I wasted a lot of money that way. Check to see if the local library has a copy, if they don't and you still want to read it then buy it. Samples mostly cut of mid sentence, it can be so tempting to hit buy just to read the end of a thought. If you are still desperate to read the rest in a couple of days then buy it.

That's my method. Does anyone else have a system?