Three Random Bookish Musings

The book gardener (cropped), 2019

01 - The curious word: undulate — According to youtuber, Merphy Napier, undulate is used in a lot of books and I find that fascinating because I have not heard of the word until I saw her video. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, undulate as an adjective means having a wavy surface, edge or markings. Undulate as a verb means to form or move in waves; to rise and fall in volume, pitch or cadence; to present a wavy appearance.  
    Already I read undulate in a couple of books including The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and a few that I can't remember the title but I wasn't searching for that word but it came up. I can't decide if this is a good word or not but I find it amusing however it is used. (You can watch Merphy Napier's video about the word here.)

02 - Is hoarding books a bad thing? — I used to buy a lot of paper books and then stacked them in a pile in a corner and I keep telling myself I'll read them some day and I sort of did read some of them. But now I buy ebooks and I hoard them the way I do with paper books except there's no pile. Whenever I open my kindle and check out all the books I have and haven't read, I do feel a bit guilty because I spent money on them (I brought them mostly during sales and some of them were free) and they aren't being read and it seems kind of sad. It's easy to snag some ebooks without even thinking too much. Of course, I could also do the same thing in a book store but with less impulse because once I get them home, I'll have to find a place for them which isn't easy. Now ebooks, I can store 2,000 books in my kindle and not even think about spacing or even organizing them. I don't have 2,000 books but I certainly have a whole lot which I swear I'll read them some day. Maybe.

03 - Read or not to read because of one word error — I read a review where one person decided not to read a book because the author misused the words its/it's and I thought that seems like a petty reason not to read a book because it's one error which most readers can easily overlook. The error was in the beginning of the first chapter (and anyone reading the book sample would easily see it). I suppose since it's so close to the beginning of the book, it sort of makes the reader think, if the author can't use one word correctly, then perhaps the rest of the book would be full of errors as well which might or might not be true. Who can say if this mistake is because the author or even editor didn't know how to use these words or if the person who set up the text make that mistake or it really is an unintentional mistake. But it's a reader's choice whether to read a book or not for any reason, good or bad, reasonable or not. For me, I wouldn't decide on a book base on a single error because no book is error-free even if they seem so.

Have you find any curious word you keep seeing in the books you read? Do you think hoarding books (paper or digital) a bad thing? Would you stop reading a book if you saw one error?