The Pinay New Yorker Recommends: bookcrossing.com

A postcard trader who visited my original website once left a guestbook entry introducing me to Bookcrossing.com after she read about how I loved to read.  This was years ago and finally, here I am preparing to release my first book into the wild.

Touted as the World’s Biggest Book Club, their welcome page states:

“You’ve come to a friendly place, and we welcome you to our book-lovers’ community. Our members love books enough to let them go — into the wild — to be found by others. Sharing your used books has never been more exciting, more serendipitous, than with BookCrossing. Our goal, simply, is to make the whole world a library. BookCrossing is a free online book club of infinite proportion, the first and only of its kind. Inside, you’ll find millions of book reviews and hundreds of thousands of passionate readers just like you.

Let’s get right down to it. You know the feeling you get after reading a book that speaks to you, that touches your life, a feeling that you want to share it with someone else? BookCrossing.com gives you a simple way to share books with the world, and follow their paths forever!”

The mechanics are simple.  You register a book you are going to release, get a unique BCID (Book Crossing Identification) Number for the book, put a bookplate or label on the book with the number, with the simple instruction for the finder to go to bookcrossing.com and register the fact that the book has been “found”, leave comments on the book or its “discovery”, and then release the book back into the wild for others to find.

I was thinking of releasing my first book into the wild in Paris, but then, New York is my home, so here I am getting ready to release one of my For One More Day books (I had bought several) into the wild before the week is out.

Bookcrossing members can likewise “Go Hunting” by searching for recent book releases in particular venues.  Yes, there are books being released in Manila, believe it or not!  I’d love to snag a book released via bookcrossing.com myself.. one of these days. New York is one of the main avenues for bookcrossing.com and there are thousands of books out there, with a release happening at least every other day it seems.

Happy book hunting!

 

My Reading List: For One More Day

This is a book you can finish in one long sitting on a lazy afternoon or a rainy day or on a night when you have a few hours to spare.  I started reading it during the commute yesterday and finished it on the way to work today.  That fast.

For One More Day is written in the same style as Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven.  You are brought through several stories within the stories as seen or read from the perspective of one character.  It was a good read and heartwarming, but after two huge successes in TUESDAYS and FIVE PEOPLE, I sort of expected Albom to go break the mold and do something different.

If this is your first time to read Albom, I would start with this book instead of the first two.  Despite the fact that it felt like I was doing a new episode in a trilogy, I liked FOR ONE MORE DAY as seen on its own merits, and not with the shadow of the first two  books hanging over its head.  It speaks from the heart of an ordinary man who fought his everyday battles.  He is a son, a father and a husband all at the same time.

Let's Say Thanks

My friend, Lynda forwarded this to me.  All it takes is a few clicks and you get to send a postcard which Xerox will print out and mail to a member of the armed forces serving in Iraq.  You can’t choose who it goes to, but you can choose your message or write one.

Click on the postcard to go to the site.