Recent Book Activity

Hey again! Pete said his profile needed updating again, so here I am! This time I actually have some idea what to write!

First of all, Pete loves travel. He's been to a ridiculous number of places, and conventions, and although he says he's jealous of my travels (something about quality over quantity blah blah blah (I wasn't really listening :p), I think he's doing pretty well to have been to so many cons!

He is also a HUGE fan of Sister Hazel (it's true, I'm not just saying that because *I* am! I think his favourite song is ' See Me Beautiful' from their recent release, 'Release' (yes that's really what it is called). One day (probably next year (2011)) we are definitely going to catch a concert of theirs.

A few random things: contrary to his amazon wishlist, he does not like pumpkin (weirdo) and does really like root beer (serious weirdo!).

He also likes to write a lot, as demonstrated by his countless blogs (really, I have no idea how many he has now, and it is getting ridiculous!) You can find these here*****:

Skyring.com.au (Everything except the following:)
Hello It's Me (letters between Skyring and Discoverylover)
Hog Jowls (American food and travel)
One More Fare (Taxi blog)
Sunnybank 74 (School Days for an upcoming reunion)


****these are the ones l the ones I could find, there are probably more out there!

Here's what Skyring had to say before I came in:

Hello everyone! My name is Peter, and I'm a Bookcrosser.

Does anyone know what Bookcrossing is? Hands up, please!

Oh. OK. Well, think about putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into the ocean to see where it will wash up. Bookcrossing is a bit like that. In 2003 I celebrated Bookcrossing's second birthday by sealing up a copy of a murder mystery called "Blackwater" in a couple of ziploc bags and tossing it into Lake Burley Griffin. At midnight. I'll tell you later where it washed up.

Think about banding birds and tracking their movements that way. I visited the Royal Albatross colony near Dunedin in 2003 where I left a book called "Sunbird" outside the visitor centre. I left another copy at the same place earlier this year.

Bookcrossing is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as "the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise." We like to think of it as "releasing books into the wild" and the Bookcrossing logo is a road warning sign showing a book running , its little arms and legs pumping away as it heads for freedom.

As of today, Bookcrossing is a global community with about as many members as the entire population of Canberra, and more than two million books have been registered, with the vast majority of them given away. That's a fair sized library, with a lot of users, when you stop to think about it.

We can blame Ron Hornbaker, a software developer in Missouri, for coming up with the concept and turning it into a website. He reasoned that books are valuable items, and people will tend to rescue a book that they find lying around, rather than throw it away. He set up a database to track books by identity numbers, and it all developed from there.

I can tell you the what, when, where and how of Bookcrossing. what is not so easy to explain is the why.

I'm a bookseller by trade. I sell second-hand books online. So it may seem odd that over the past two and a half years I've given away well over a thousand perfectly good books.

I suppose that the easy answer is because it is fun. There's a certain thrill in leaving a book at a bus stop or coffee shop for someone else to find. It's even more fun when somebody finds that book, looks up Bookcrossing.com and makes a journal entry. The Bookcrossing member who released the book gets an email with a copy of whatever the finder said about the book.

Bookcrossing has an element of adventure about it. There's the thrill of the chase when you go hunting books that other people have set free. I can look up recently released books across the world, though of course I prefer to see what books are out there in the wild in Canberra.

And sometimes, if you have a keen eye, Bookcrossing books can be discovered by stumbling across them. In second hand bookshops, in youth hostel reading rooms, coffee shops, floating in ponds. Perhaps the oddest place a book was ever released was under the snout of a glacier in New Zealand. As a matter of fact, that was me, and I liked my New Zealand Bookcrossing adventure so much, I wrote a book about it.

I recently had another adventure, where I travelled around the world, first to London, where I left a book on every square on the Monopoly board. Except for Free Parking. And then I attended a Bookcrossing convention in Fort Worth, Texas, where I met some of the leading Bookcrossers, including Ron Hornbaker and his co-founders.

Perhaps part of the fun of Bookcrossing is writing down a pocket review of a book, especially if it is one you enjoyed, and then seeing what others think of it. Of course if you are not the first person to journal a book, there is a chain of journal entries stretching back to the day it was first registered.

I've passed on books that I found to be well-written, or thought-provoking, Or just plain interesting, and had the pleasure of seeing other readers likewise enjoy it. And it works the other way - I've lost count of the number of great authors and wonderful books I've found through Bookcrossing. Often I'll pick up and read a book I would never have dreamed of buying or taking out of the library, but because it is a Bookcrossing book, I'll read it if I have time. And sometimes I've loved these books and gone on to buy more by the same author. I have a huge pile of books on my bedside table. I call it "Mount Toberead."

But Bookcrossing is about more than releasing books. There is a community of Bookcrossers around the world, and they all seem to be active in sending books to each other. They set up things called bookrings, where a book is passed from reader to reader, often travelling great distances in the process. Some of these bookrings have a chain of dozens of people. Or there is a concept called a Random Act of Bookcrossing Kindness, where a Bookcrossing member will send a book to another Bookcrosser, simply because they have a copy and they know that the gift will be appreciated.

Around the world there are monthly meetings, self-organised by local Bookcrossers. They will get together at a coffee shop or a pub and just sit down and talk about books. Usually a pile of books begins to accumulate in the middle of the table, and it grows with every new face. At the end of the gathering, people take the books they want and any left over are just left behind for whoever comes along. It's an odd thing, but the more books I give away, the more books I seem to get.

I have attended meetings and Bookcrossing conventions around the world, and I have gradually come to the realisation that Bookcrossing is not about books so much as people. Bookcrossers tend to be generous, well-read, friendly, sharing people, and I treasure the hours I spend in their company. It is not just a huge pile of books that I have accumulated in two years, but a long list of wonderful friends.

And that book I threw into Lake Burley Griffin two years ago? It washed up in Borneo, via a local resident who found it, read it and sent it on to a friend in Malaysia. I've since met that lady a couple of times, we've exchanged books, and we now count ourselves as close friends. I often wonder now, whenever I release a book, just where it will end up. Maybe in the lost and found box, or maybe in someone's heart.

I'm back home in Canberra after a quick trip around the world via London, Texas and California. I kept a journal of my adventures here
And again via Hiroshima, Omaha Beach, Guernsey, Dublin, Welshpool, Frankfurt, Toronto, Charleston and Pearl Harbour. And yet again via Hong Kong, Frankfurt, London, Birmingham, Glasgow, New York, Tokyo and Sydney.
(Update 2007) Tokyo, London, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Fort Worth, Chicago, Washington DC and Charleston . That's counting the places I actually left the airport, mind. The same trip I flew into Hong Kong on two successive days from different directions.

---