The dream of every literature nerd... I got paid for reading books.
While doing a literature PhD and spending a few hours a week teaching tidbits of what I knew to gangly undergrads (my formal job), I moonlighted as a literary advisor to a publishing house. This basically meant reading two to three books a week and writing a one-page report on each of them, outlining the plot and narration and advising the publishing house on whether or not they should have this book translated and published here. This paid as much as my formal job.

My rough guess is that I read about 400 books during a 3-year period: mostly novels, but also history, natural science and the odd memoir. Many books were really good,, and there was also the thrill of finding out stuff no one else had any idea about: I got to know Jonathan Strange, Never Let Me Go and the original source of the Munich movie before anyone else around here. (I tried to keep some of the books - I still have giant folders full of print-outs of novels on my shelves.) I I came across a really bad book, I could simply skip through it and report it, truthfully, as too dull to be read by the public. I never would have had the opportunity to get, or even know about, any of these without the job.

I even got to attend the big book fairs - in Frankfurt and London - for the publishing house. I didn't get extra money for these, but I got to take fancy vacations, stay in hotels, eat a lot fo good Chinese food (which does not really exist here) on the company account, and order the books that I wanted to read in the next few months directly from their publishers. Unfortunately, the whole arrangement was dumped when my employers decided they had no more money to spend on foreign books. But it was a beautiful time of getting to be a know-it-all and being paid for it.
(joansie, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 7:40, 2 replies)

So very, very, very jealous..
Click.
(anvil, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 9:28, closed)

Me too
Lucky thing
(BearWithLittleBrain, Thu 16 Sep 2010, 11:39, closed)