Natasha and I bought our Chapters gift cards into the store after the holidays, gritting our teeth and embarking on the excruciating task of picking a handful of books from the many thousands available on the shelves. Don’t get me wrong, I love the end result of going book shopping, but it’s agonizing to have to make all the decisions.

Some of the books I’d looked most forward to I was disappointed with in the store – the hardcover “Art of Avatar” book claims to be 108 pages, but probably just less than half are boilerplate publisher pages and self-aggrandizing speeches by James Cameron, leaving around 60 pages of sketchy artwork and production talk. For $45? I’d be better off drawing my own. I’ll pick up this month’s Cinefex when it comes out.

I did however manage to pick up a bunch of books from the Canada Reads list, and I’ll be posting up some reviews as I finish them. On a shelf in the fiction department I discovered a series of sequels to Wicked, a book I really enjoyed last year, so I nabbed those too.