Profile Image

LeighBCD

Joined Thursday, April 4, 2002
Recent Book Activity
Statistics
4 weeks all time
books registered 0 816
released in the wild 0 525
controlled releases 0 1
releases caught 0 183
controlled releases caught 0 1
books found 0 73
tell-a-friend referrals 0 57
new member referrals 0 29
forum posts 0 571
Extended Profile
I live in England but Australia is my home and the world is at my feet.

As anyone will be able to tell from browsing through my bookshelf (or checking out my music), I have eclectic taste and a wide variety of books. Sometimes I read something high-brow or literary; other times I need something else, usually an airport thriller to relax my brain. I record every book I read here in my profile in the order in which I touch it; you can always tell if I have been stressed or tired if a vampire tale appears below. This list of books is my own special kind of internet diary.

I travel all the time for work and, less frequently, for pleasure and do not get a chance to read as much as I want to... I have piles of unread books but I am incapable of passing a bookshop without buying something to add to them. I am far too young to retire and spend my days reading them all so the mountain of books just keeps on growing...

But, ever since I discovered the Nancy Pearl rule, I have been liberated from the pressure of not reading as much as I want. Nancy's rule says that as I am under the age of 50, I give every new book a chance up until page 50. If I am not enjoying it by then, I toss it aside (or better yet, release it into the wild). I feel free and the pressure of those piles has gone away - Mount Unread Books is at long last scaleable!

I have been a Bookcrosser since the earliest days of the site. The first book I registered here was the The Dress Lodger, a book that I had bought while living in San Francisco, taken back with me to London and subsequently released into the wild. I am still waiting for someone to find it!!

The best books I have read since joining Bookcrossing all those days ago are A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe, The Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, English Passengers by Matthew Kneale and the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. My desert island books would be Persuasion by Jane Austen, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy and Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier.

Here is my favourite "in the wild" catch so far. My second favourite is this book which was released by me in a London tube station and was journalled a month later by someone who had picked it up in a Queensland youth hostel! I would love to know how my book made it all the way to Australia without my help but there you go... that is the karma of Bookcrossing I guess.

*****************************************

Books I have read in 2004.
Elegance; Eucalyptus; A Thousand Orange Trees; Bodily Harm; Girls Out Late; Kisscut; Track of the Cat; Morse's Greatest Mystery and other stories; Your Body's Many Cries for Water; Four to Score; The Painter; The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits; Dancing with the Virgins; Stillwatch; The Daughter of Time; Cupid and Diana; Trouble Becomes Her; The Shape of Snakes; Artemis Fowl; Bridge of Birds; Her Infinite Variety: Stories of Shakespeare and the women he loved; Empire Falls; Messiah; Vox; White Oleander; Morrieson's Motel; Delta of Venus; The Dante Club; Angels and Demons; Shooting Elvis; Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal; The Sexual Life of Catherine M.; A Round-Heeled Woman; The Lady and the Unicorn; Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress; The Blue Flower; The Small Boat of Great Sorrows; English Passengers; Knowledge of Angels; Lamb: The Gospel according to Biff; The Visitant; The Summoning God; When Bobby Kennedy was a Moving Man; A Landing on the Sun; Bone Walker; The Family Tree; Spies; Larry's Party; A Superior Death; Second Glance; Brick Lane; A Literary Companion to Rome; Pope Joan; Monday Mourning; The Secret Life of Bees; Kindred; High Five; Isabel's Bed; White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India; Eleven Days; Savannah Blues; The Neon Rain; The Clerkenwell Tales; The Queen's Fool; A Faint Cold Fear; The Taking; Vernon God Little; A Spy's Life; Dead in the Water; Shiver; Ill Wind; The Mummy; Far From the Madding Crowd; Pompeii; The Return of the Dancing Master; Fall on your Knees; Want to Play?; Absolute Friends; The Chocolate Run; Animal Dreams; The Poyson Garden; Ecclesiastical History of the English People; Wrack; A Metropolitan Murder; Digital Fortress;

**************************
Books I have read in 2005.
Our Lady of the Forest; The Baby Farm; The Visit of the Royal Physician; The American Boy; Old School; A Thousand Days in Venice; The Pillars of the Earth; Deception Point; Courting Trouble; The Jane Austen Book Club; Death at La Fenice; The Shadow of the Wind; The Time Traveler's Wife; Heaven's Prisoners; Cloud Atlas; The Rule of Four; The Devil in the White City; The Undomestic Goddess; The Historian; The People's Act of Love; A Prayer for Owen Meany; The Mapmaker's Wife; The Good German; The Last Templar; The Coast Road; Oh, Play that Thing!; The Devil Wears Prada; Skinny Dip; The Rule of Four; The Jury Must Die; Red Mars; The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower I); Ireland: A Novel; New Orleans Mourning; Romanitas;

**************************
Books I have read in 2006
www.bookcrossing.com/---/3917565"A Clash of Kings; The Grave Tattoo; The Tipping Point; Eleanor Roosevelt (Volume I 1884-1933); Firestorm; Strip Tease; The Assassins' Gate; Have Mercy on Us All; The Penelopiad; Snow; Freakonomics; Labyrinth; Ladysmith; Guilty Pleasures; Flashman; Maisie Dobbs; Break No Bones; The Island at the Centre of the World; Faithless; My Best Friend's Girl; A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow; A Storm of Swords: Blood and Gold; God: A Biography; The Thirteenth Tale; March; Strip Jack; The City of Falling Angels; The Treatment; The Traveler; Good Harbor; Moo; We Need To Talk About Kevin; Watching the English;

**************************
Books I have read in 2007.
Lonesome Dove; The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft; Saving Fish from Drowning; Royal Flash; A Gathering Light; The Sixth Lamentation; Agincourt; The Interpretation of Murder; The Last Mughal; The Old Wives' Tale; The Half-Life; Anybody Out There?; The Laughing Corpse; On Chesil Beach; Keeping Faith; A Feast for Crows; The Mathematics of Love; Journey to the Stone Country; The History of Love; The Secret History of the Pink Carnation; A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian; Everyman; Portrait in Death; Sunset and Sawdust; Don't you know who I am? Insider Diariies of Fame, Power and Naked Ambition; The Secret Supper; A Place Called Here; Lord of the Flies; Arlington Park; Purple Hibiscus; The Tenderness of Wolves; The Boleyn Inheritance; Skin Privilege; Someone at a Distance; The Sultan's Seal; Getting Rid of Matthew; This Book Will Save Your Life; Endangered Species; A Wedding in December; Me and Mr Darcy; One Unknown; Bones to Ashes; Guns, Germs and Steel; The Epic of Mount Everest; The Hotel on the Roof of the World; The Twenty-Seventh City; Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer; Ghosts of Everest; The King's Last Song; Birds of a Feather; Dissolution; Dune; The Savage Garden; The Late Bloomer's Revolution; Mary: Mrs A. Lincoln; The Pillars of the Earth; Doomsday Book;

**************************
Books I have read in 2008.
Affinity; Thunderstruck; The Welsh Girl; Tulip Fever; Lucky You; Julie & Julia; The Other Side of the Bridge; Love Walked In; The Shakespeare Secret; Shantaram; A Quiet Belief in Angels; The Brief History of the Dead; Paula Spencer; The Distance between us; Circus of the Damned; A Spot of Bother; The Company: A Novel of the CIA; Antarctica; Hot Six; Under the Banner of Heaven; Eat, Pray, Love; The Carhullan Army; This Charming Man; The Woods; Blood Brothers; Star of the Sea; The Gentle Axe; The Gospel of Judas; Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest; Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad's Green Zone; Footprints in the Sand; Rollback; Ten Days in the Hills; Slammerkin; Beneath the Bleeding; The Seventh Son; The Ghost; Venetia; Decider; The Uncommon Reader; Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years; No Time for Goodbye; The Private Lives of Pippa Lee; The Cairo Diary; The Pirate's Daughter; The Last Legion; The Pied Piper's Poison; The Black Moth; East of the Sun; Viking: Odinn's Child; Agatha Christie: An English Mystery; Confessions of a Teen Sleuth; The House at Riverton; Devil Bones; The Food of Love; The Other Queen; Going Dutch; Sepulchre; The 19th Wife; The Mitfords: Letters between Six Sisters; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; Learning the World: A Novel of First Contact; Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance; Dark Fire; The 80/20 Principle; The End of Mr. Y;; Twilight; New Moon; Eclipse; The Lies of Locke Lamora; King Leopold's Ghost; The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas; The Sisterhood; Flash for Freedom!;

**************************
Books I have read in 2009.
The Hollow; Breaking Dawn; The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton; Loving Frank; The Right Stuff; The Aviary Gate; Captain Alatriste; The Secret History of the World; The Sunday Philosophy Club; The Pagan Stone; The Other Hand; The Thirteenth Apostle; Light on Snow; The Bar on the Seine; Simon the Coldheart; The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.; Life Swap; The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda's Road to 9/11"; Sea of Poppies; Poison Study; Hold Tight; A Darker Domain; God Bless America: Misadventures of a Big-Mouthed Brit; Lady of Hay; Spilling the Beans; The Beach House; Under a Blood Red Sky; Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945; The Widows of Eastwick; Powder and Patch; The Greed Merchants: How the Investment Banks played the Free Market Game; The Girl Who Played with Fire; Istanbul: Memories of a City; The White Queen; The Lost Symbol; A Moment of Silence; Magic Study;

**************************
Books I have read in 2010.
Plain Truth; The Terror; Silence of the Grave; Quicksilver; Too Big To Fail: Inside the Battle to save Wall Street; Ilium; The Angel's Game; These Old Shades; Under the Dome; The Distant Echo; Prep; Liar's Poker; The Big Short; Revelation Space; Last Rituals; Wishful Drinking; A Singular Hostage; A Room Swept White; Lustrum; The Wilding; Rosetta;

Are you sure you want to delete this item? It cannot be undone.