A month or two ago, I was skimming what was available on BookMooch that was 1) in German and 2) available from users in the States. I saw a fiction book, Wie ein einziger Tag by some fellow named Nicholas Sparks. I was wanting a run-of-the-mill fiction book so as to work on my everyday German vocabulary, and this looked like it might fit the bill. I hopped over to the amazon.de page, saw that it had an excellent overall rating, and requested it. I received it in short order, and put it on the shelf until I had some time to sit down and work through some of it.

Tonight I had a bit of time, and so I pulled the book out with pen and notebook in hand. I read through the first 15 or 20 pages, and well – oh my. It’s what I get, really, for being out of the loop in regards to bestseller novelists, especially those who write mostly romance. Sentimental, gushy romance. I skimmed through some of the later sections of the book, and came to the conclusion that, while I’m willing to submit myself to a lot of things in my quest for an enlarged German vocabulary, Nicholas Sparks is not one of the things I’m going to submit myself to. Yuck. I felt like I was reading a very bad soap opera.
If I’d seen this cover of The Notebook (the original English version of Wie ein einziger Tag), I would have known to stay far, far away:

See, sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.

If anyone wants a copy of Wie ein einziger Tag, there’s a copy available on BookMooch.