I'd say, if you read enough to give a reliable opinion, it's read. If someone were to ask you "How did you like it?" and your natural response is "I didn't really read enough to decide," then you didn't read it.

I don't mind contemporary fantasy, but I do get irritated when a High Fantasy world is mixed with modernity. Like, if they discovered an iPhone in Mordor, I'd be done. But Anne Rice, Jonathan Stroud, and JKR have all done fantasy in 'contemporary' settings and it doesn't bother me because these ideas were all disclosed up-front (I guess you could say, they have stayed true to the pact they have made with the reader).

The description made me think of some sort of fantasy with elemental magic. An 'Avatar: Last Airbender' book maybe?

I don't put much stock in covers, but I do get sentimentally attached to what ever edition was my first reading (whether hardback or paperback - it's like I'm emotionally attached to the object itself).

I've bought a few signed/historic books as gifts for friends who really loved a particular author or poet. I've used both Abe and Biblio here in the US, which act as e-platforms for niche sellers/collectors. Third Mind in Ann Arbor, MI, and Alan Wofsy in San Francisco I really loved because they had original broadsides of obscure beat poets.