A ramble and how other people buy books

Today was my only day in the office after the magical vanishing Bank Holiday (gone before my very eyes!) as I am here, there, and everywhere this week, attending workshops and conferences. This is tiring, but does mean that I will have a few hours on the train for some quality book time with no distractions, which will be very welcome. I hope to finish both books I'm in the middle of - Pandora in the Congo, and How to read a Poem and fall in love with poetry by Edward Hirsch.
The latter I picked up after reading about it on Fiske's blog. It is a good follow-up to the Stephen Fry book; I was anxious not to have my newly reawakened passion for poetry peter out and to fall back into the lazy habits of only occasionally picking up a poetry book on a rainy afternoon. I want poetry to be a permanent part of my life again, as it was in my late teens, early twenties.
This book is less straight-forward than the Fry one, more about the meaning of poems - or at least what they convey to Hirsch - than understanding the mechanics. I think a good comparison would be if you were learning to draw the human form and one teacher shows you muscle structures and how the body is put together, where as the second enthuses about the beauty of the human form. While you can be caught up by the second's enthusiasm for the beauty of the whole, the first will give you a better understanding of what you are drawing and greater understanding is, I think, often a key to more enjoyment. Which means: I think I am reading these two books in the right order.
Fry has given me an excellent grounding in the basics and mechanics of poetry (but, don't mistake me, is also very good at writing enthusiastically and engendering this in the reader) and I am prepared effectively for Hirsch's book which looks more at the effect of poetry and its meaning. I have just read a section about a villanelle by Elizabeth Bishop and although Hirsch briefly explains what a villanelle is, the detailed introduction to this beautiful form given by Stephen Fry made it much simpler to appreciate the poem and the sentiments of Edward Hirsch. At the moment, although only part way through the Hirsch, I can recommend both books, but I think they work best in this order.

In my one day in the office this week, here is a depressing snippett I heard in the kitchen while making a cup of tea:

'I just go into Waterstones and choose a book with a cover that takes my fancy.'

'So do I, you can judge a book by it's cover.'

Hmm. I am as guilty of anyone of taking pleasure in a beautifully made book, and of being irritated by a bad cover (such as that for my copy of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther) but to base my buying on the cover alone is quite a terrifying thought. What would I end up with I wonder? However, I suppose it reminds me that not everyone is like us in the devoted-to-literature (in its widest sense) world of book bloggers. The casual reader will be driven by different impulses and the publishing companies have to take note of them if they are to survive.