After looking through all nine(!) pages of samples, books, and various other downloads, I came up with a list of samples I have downloaded and either never read or hadn't decided to buy immediately. I find that, often, if I don't buy the book right after reading the sample, when I go back and look at the title I don't recall what the book was about. Solution: I went through my list title by title, looking up each one online and, if I was somewhat interested, I downloaded the Publishers Weekly write-up about the book.
Once I had refreshed my memory about each book, I then color coded them (I know, I'm crazy). If I knew I would never read them, I highlighted them in red. Those that I might consider reading got a yellow highlight, and those that I definitely want to read got green. This wasn't actually just busy work; I really needed to jog my memory about why I had at one time thought these books might interest me. Plus, the way my memory has been performing lately, I might even download the same sample again and not recognize that I've already read it. This way, before making that mistake, I can check it against my list (an ongoing project) and see if I've already sampled the book.
Final count:
I will definitely read five of the books.
I might read forty-one.
I definitely will not read seventeen.
Two that I will definitely read are: The Flight of Gemma Hardy by Margot Livesey, which sounds like a modern-day Jane Eyre. Gemma is orphaned when her father drowns and she has to leave her native Iceland to go live in Scotland with a kindly uncle and his family. The uncle, of course, also dies and she's sent to live in a strict private school. She ultimately winds up the au pair to an 8-year-old on the Orkney islands. Sounds like fun to me.
Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon's Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong In Print -- and How to Avoid Them by Bill Walsh. This one's pretty self-explanatory, but the sample was funny and I want to read more.
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