Book Hunting

I'm in the midst of exams right now, and very technically shouldn't be posting (shouldn't even be reading - which I'm not, not any English books right now anyway), but this is such good news that I had to get it out of my system.

First, let me tell you, I've always wanted to collect books. It's actually not a bad idea, because some books can be worth a lot of money. And it's really fascinating; the small collection of books (fine, 1 or 2 books) that I have on books show how it can be just like a treasure hunt. But don't get me wrong, this post isn't on the wonders of book rare books, but that's only because I don't have enough experience.

The background: (sounds professional. heh) When I was a kid, before I moved to where I am today, I remember reading this book of short stories. They were all very funny, but since this is about 5/6 years later, I only remember two: One about a very wet rainy town, where they can't get the tourism they want, but in the end, an artist comes up with a brillant plan (and on the way falls in love with the policewomen), and the other, about a man who wants to cut the lawn but in the end, doesn't.

At first, I thought that it was an impossible task (try googling "don't cut the lawn" or "the very wet town" and see the random search results), but then, I remembere amazon.com. Actually, I tried that first, but again, I either got tourism books or books on lawn care. I even tried asking my Yahoo! books group, but no one could remember.

But finally, I was reading a book on the history of amazon.com, and read about how in the begining, the workers were so smart that they could remember a book just by getting a brief description, so, I decided to try asking amazon.com. Well, they didn't know the book, but they did tell me how to use the search engine more efficiently. This led me to "Stories for Six Year Olds". But, the book didn't seem right. And it only had the lawn story, not the town one.

For a moment, I actually had a smart idea. I found the name of the author and googled her. But it didn't work, because Margaret Mahy (the authoress) has written a lot of book. I really thank the ISBN people, because from one short story name, they told me all the books this story has featured.

And Tada~ The long years of searching were at the end. As soon as I read the synopsis for "The Girl With The Green Ear", I knew it was the one. And no wonder no one knows about it, it was published in 1992, a year before I was born.

So there you have it, my long-winded (but happy ending) story on book hunting