Desert Island Keepers. I like the sound of that.

My name is Josee Renard and I’m an addict. A book addict. I write erotica, but I read everything. And when I say that, I really mean it. I’ve been reading it all since I can remember – mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, romance of all kinds, kids’ books, YA, non-fiction about whatever I’m interested in at the moment, literary novels, poetry, short stories… The list is probably long enough to fill up my whole post.

And being an addict means that I have a huge TBR pile and I’m always adding to it. I’m never completely comfortable with the pile – and by that I mean that I never quite feel as if I have enough to read. Choosing desert island keepers would be a ginormous challenge for me.

Should I go with half a dozen of the longest books? Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. James Michener’s The Source. Dickens’ Bleak House. You get the picture. This way I’d get a whole lot of pages for my buck.

Or should I go with the books I know I’ll read over and over and over again (because I already have)? Jane Austen’s Persuasion. Judith McNaught’s Someone to Watch Over Me. Any book of Suzanne Brockmann’s. Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion.

I suspect, though, that what would happen is I’d buy the new top of the line Kindle (I don’t yet have an e-reader), a couple of solar panels to charge it, and load it up. I’d do this because I’m an addict. I can’t live without books, a lot of books. I start to panic if I’m on a plane and I don’t have three novels plus four or five magazines just in case.

And on that Kindle, I’d include all my favorites: the hundreds (I’m not kidding) of books I can’t give up because I re-read them; the poetry of Neruda, Bronwen Wallace, Al Purdy, Mary Oliver and Raymond Carver for starters; the newest releases of my go-to writers – Brockmann, Roberts, King, Ondaatje, Kearsley, Sinclair, Hoffman, McCarthy, Irving, Stephenson, Gibson, Holly and others; some serious non-fiction, probably by Gladwell to start with; and a year’s worth of back issues of The New Yorker.

And then I’d go to Amazon and just click on every cover that tempted me. I might get some things I wouldn’t ordinarily read – but for sure I’d have 1,400 books to entertain me. On a desert island, with nothing else to do, that might last about a year. And then I’d start over again.

That would work. I could make it with 1,400 books. Maybe not for long – but for a year I could do it.

I’m ready. Just let me know when I have to leave.

Josee

Blurb:

Jules has been drooling over Shea, the barista at the coffee shop around the corner, for months. But it’s way worse now that Shea has been away for six weeks. Even a weekend in Las Vegas and his incredibly detailed fantasies about their first naked encounter don’t help.

What he doesn’t realize is that Shea has been crushing on him for just as long and when he gets back from Australia, he’s got plans for the two of them—naked, sexy, hot plans.


You can find Josee at:
http://joseerenard.wordpress.com/
http://www.joseerenard.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Josee-Renard/163055307086304/
http://www.twitter.com/Josee_Renard
http://www.cobblestone-press.com/catalog/author/joseerenard.htm