Booking Through Thursday: Sign on the Dotted Line or the Title Page

Here is this week’s Booking Through Thursday:

Do signed copies excite you? Tempt you? Delight you? Or does it not matter to you?

I like signed book copies, especially if I’ve gone to hear the author read at an event like the Texas Book Festival, bought the book, and waited in line for him or her to sign. But, a book doesn’t have to have a signature to tempt me to read it or own it.

Some books I own with signatures:

• Somebody Told Me by Rick Bragg (a collection of  feature stories signed at Texas Book Festival before Bragg got ousted from The New York Times)
• Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (novel signed at Texas Book Festival)
• Nobody’s Girl by Antonya Nelson (novel signed at Texas Book Festival. I think she and Patchett may have been on the same panel.)
• Nothing but Blue Skies by Thomas McGuane (novel signed at Texas Book Festival)
• Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards by Robert Olen Butler (story collection in which Butler uses postcards for the basis of the stories)
• A Stone of the Heart by Tom Grimes (copy I bought at Texas Book Festival pre-autographed. Missed Grimes’ panel.)
• Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon (bought copy at local bookstore Book People in Austin)
• Sex, Art, and American Culture by Camille Paglia (bought used at Half-Price Books; signed to someone else; wonder if Paglia must’ve fallen out of favor with reader)

Here’s a PDF of the signatures:

Signatures