Tuesday 19 April 2011

released into the wild

I have been devouring books lately. Fortunately the library van is still chugging round every 2 weeks and the Wetterstones in town hasn't been closed yet.
Just as well as their advent closed all the other Indy bookshops in double quick time a few years back.
Finished The Rapture by Liz Jensen yesterday, she writes very well, richly and somehow in the "now" dunno what I mean by that. It just seemed her characters were living in a world I recognised, that is before it all went eco-catastrophe and religious mania..............but even that built on strains of behaviour and science I had heard of. It is set slightly in the future and goes a bit block buster at the end, but i did enjoy her intelligent approach to the madness.
Before that I read Mystery by JKellerman, absolute sensationalised rubbish.
I was so annoyed with him, that when I joined the Book Crossing website, his was one of the first to give away.
It is very happy contrivance for me. I have so many book cluttering up the house, even tho i do download quite a few, I do still prefer the actual pages.
With the Book Crossing wheeze I can just register them on the site, leave them somewhere and hope that one day I hear back from peeps all over the globe..................[well around here anyway] that someone has picked it up to read.
The other giveaway was The Gate at the Stairs, is that right, a novel by Laurie..........someone. It was a slow burner but in the end I enjoyed it. Of course I didn't want to leave 2 junk thrillers in the same spot, too shaming.
We went out to have a corned beef hash lunch at the Victoria, a country pub near us today, so i left behind my two prepared books - with Book Crossing labels to explain, stuck inside.
As was inevitable, a woman came puffing out after us to return them, just as we were making our Le Mans getaway.
So i had to explain the principle of releasing books into the wild.
Hopefully it will get to be a more slick operation.
In the past I have given books to friends [but do they really want them] and down to the charity shops [too much heavy lifting thru a pedestrianised zone] so this could be the answer.
I know the library is really perfect, as one has to return books but I am too impatient to get the new releases.
Have been to Wetstones already and replenished with The Sentry; The Last Werewolf and best of all the new Fred Vargas.
Yes, alright, they were doing 3 for 2.

2 comments:

carol said...

You're much more adventursome with your reading. I find an author I like and stick like glue till I've read all they've written, doing a lot of re-reading in between.

Gillian said...

Well I'mm going to the book crossing site as soon as I type this. I haven't any to deposit (too much moving home and crossing oceans etc) but I sure would be happy to pick some up.
I do have concerns about my local area as a provider, but we shall see. I still have the third of "The girl with..." to read. I needed a break.
Cheers Gillian