welcome to camp telophase

I have a character in search of a story, and while trying to shake that loose, I thought I'd list out the books and authors that made a huge impact on me over the years, and see what most jumped out.

( cut for musings on what I like in stories )

Also, unrelatedly except that I've been intending to post this for a very long time and keep forgetting: the Bacon Deviled Egg Salad from Nom Nom Paleo is the most fantastic egg salad that either I or myrialux have eaten. We've made it before--I must add neither of us cares for parsley so we leave it out, and we don't actually eat Paleo or keto, so we just use whatever mayo we have on hand (usually Kewpie). This time we added chopped-up leftover turkey to it, which works excellently, and there were no shallots at the grocery store so a Texas sweet onion was pressed into service. She also steams the eggs for 12 minutes and I usually steam them for 14-15 (I've been steaming instead of boiling for a few years now, because it's faster than waiting for water to come to a boil).

The comments for the Get Rich Slowly post on the spending habits of the average American are, naturally, full of people appalled at the $118 figure for books that the stats have, plus people who explain that they're avid readers and yet spend very little on books because of libraries, ILL, used bookstores, trading books, etc.

So far, there's only one person being snarky about those who read a lot, but I've seen other blogs and other comments where other commenters get extremely snarky about people who don't use the library for most or all of their reading, and who spend large amounts of money on books.

That sparked a thought - while I'm not entirely sure where the hatred in the posts I remember comes from (surely book-buyers haven't killed their dogs?) - I do have to wonder: do they think one book is much like another? In other words: do they think that they will always be able to find what they want at the library? Do they not have particular tastes in books? How do they think publishers decide what will be published? Are they OK with best-sellers being the primary form of books available, and small-press books shouldn't be available if they can't somehow find enough market share to publish?

I'm not being especially coherent about this, because I haven't worked out the thoughts fully and I'm starving, as it's lunchtime. :D I thought I'd open it for comment, in order to work out better what I think.