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heysquid

From Seattle, Washington USA
Age 54
Joined Monday, September 9, 2002
Recent Book Activity
Statistics
4 weeks all time
books registered 0 1,581
released in the wild 0 1,108
controlled releases 0 2
releases caught 0 249
controlled releases caught 0 0
books found 0 14
tell-a-friend referrals 0 18
new member referrals 0 53
forum posts 0 109
Extended Profile
**PLEASE DO NOT REQUEST BOOKS FROM ME UNLESS YOU INTEND TO RELEASE OR RETURN THEM AFTER YOU HAVE FINISHED READING THEM. IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO SET THEM FREE, THEN I WILL FIND SOMEONE ELSE WITH WHOM SHARE THEM.**

I have lived in Seattle, Washington for about 23 years now, after growing up in Olympia (WA), going to school at Whitman College in Walla Walla (WA) and spending a chunk of time overseas (in the south of France and Morocco mainly). I spent almost 7 years working in the translation & interpretation industry but now spend my days at the University of Washington School of Medicine as well as working a couple shifts a week at a local pub for a bit of extra spending money--it's a friendly place, and I used to run the pub quiz they had there, so I would get to fill my brain with all kinds of interesting, arcane and sometimes silly stuff for pay--now I just do it for my own amusement. I'm totally psyched about Bookcrossing because the notion of turning the whole wide world into a sort of free-for-all library is incredibly appealing and worthwhile. The idea of turning books loose into the wild in hopes that some unsuspecting person will find a book they would never have otherwise read is so cool....please be aware, though, that if I have not yet read a book that you are interested in, chances are I will only mail/release on loan, though this is not set in stone. I have noted books that are not for available for a full-on permanent trade, either in the titles or in the reviews. However, as with the "to be read" stack, I am generally willing to loan out books that are otherwise not for trade (these are mostly NFT due to sentimental value). Please contact me if you have a specific title in mind and we can discuss it. At risk of sounding crabby and somewhat cynical, please do not ask me for a book unless you are actually going to either set it free or give it back to me after you have read it. If you do not intend to release/return it, go to the library or buy your own copy (preferably at an independent bookseller). This is BookCrossing, not the Santa Claus wish site. My understanding is that what we're doing here is engaging in an adventure to see what random, serendipitous paths the books can take, so if you simply want a book to put on your shelves and not share with the next person down the line, please just don't even ask. Sorry about the tirade....

I tend toward the eclectic with my reading choices, enjoying everything from Nabokov to Feynman to McCaffrey. According to my dad, I taught myself to read at the age of 3, and soon turned into one of those kids who took a flashlight to bed with her to keep reading under the covers past bedtime, which caused my parents no end of both frustration and satsifaction (I may have been a tired kid, but at least I was well-read for all the fatigue). I love learning new things, and am just as likely to be found reading a text on particle physics or a horror novel as a book about polar exploration or a volume of poetry. In addition, I'm currently editing the translation of my second novel (second novel I've translated, not second one I've written), so that's taking up a bit of time too, but I am currently reading:
"I Am Malala" - Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb
"Kraken: The Curious, Exciting and Slightly Disturbing Science of Squid" - Wendy Williams
"Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikolai Tesla" - Marc J. Seifer
and "Lady Susan" - Jane Austen

And so far this year I have read:
“Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements” – Hugh Aldersey-Williams
“High-Rise” – JG Ballard
“A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie” – Kathryn Harkup
“The Handmaid’s Tale” – Margaret Atwood
“Lingo: Around the World in Sixty Languages” – Gaston Dorren
“All the Light We Cannot See” – Anthony Doerr
“Treasure Island” – Robert Louis Stevenson
“Sparkling Cyanide” – Agatha Christie
“The Secret Garden” Frances Hodgson Burnett
“Anne of Green Gables” – LM Montgomery
“Anne of Avonlea” – LM Montgomery
“Anne of the Island” – LM Montgomery
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” – JK Rowling
Audiobook of “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” – AJ Hartley & David Hewson/Richard Armitage
“The White Dragon” – Anne McCaffrey
“A Wild Swan” – Michael Cunningham
“Death on the Nile” – Agatha Christie
“The Art of Language Invention” – David J. Peterson
“Frankenstein” – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
“Lives of the Monster Dogs” – Kirsten Bakis
“Fledgling” – Octavia E. Butler
“Pawn of Prophecy” – David Eddings
“Queen of Sorcery” – David Eddings
“Magician’s Gambit” – David Eddings
“Castle of Wizardry” – David Eddings
“Enchanter’s End Game” – David Eddings
“Venetia” – Georgette Heyer
“A Dog’s Heart” – Mikhail Bulgakov
“The Turn of the Screw” Henry James
“The Night Circus” – Erin Morgenstern
“Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus” – Bill Wasik/Monica Murphy
“King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table” – Benedict Flynn
“The Word for World is Forest” – Ursula K. LeGuin
“The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings” – Philip Zaleski/Carol Zaleski
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” – Rebecca Skloot
“The Girl with All the Gifts” MR Carey
“Into Thin Air” – Jon Krakauer
“A Caribbean Mystery” – Agatha Christie
“Nemesis” – Agatha Christie
“David Copperfield” – Charles Dickens
“Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" - JK Rowling
“Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of the Earth Worm” – Amy Stewart
“The Supernaturalist” – Eoin Colfer
“The Book of Speculation” – Erika Swyler
“The Unnoticeables” – Robert Brockway
“The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax” – Dorothy Gilman
“Exploring JRR Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’” – Corey Olsen
“Sleeping Giants” – Sylvain Neuvel
“The Sleeper and the Spindle” – Neil Gaiman
“The City & The City” – China Mieville
"Ordeal by Innocence" - Agatha Christie
"The Loney" - Andrew Michael Hurley
"Texts from Jane Eyre" - Mallory Ortberg
"Theremin" - Melissa Murray
"The Shining Girls" - Lauren Beukes
"The Fire Next Time" - James Baldwin
"The Bone Clocks" - David Mitchell
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" - Washington Irving
A few creepy short stories by Poe, Collins, Wells, De Maupassant, and James
"The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu" - Joshua Hammer
"Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell" - Susannah Clarke
"Barbara of the House of Grebe" - Thomas Hardy
"Of Sorrow and Such" - Angela Slatter
"Binti" - Nnedi Okorafor
"Syndrome E" - Franck Thilliez
"Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania" - Erik Larsen
"Dark Waters" - Rain Oxford
"Witches of Lychford" - Paul Cornell
"Lot No. 249" - Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Mortal Immortal" - Mary Shelley
"The Boys in the Boat" - Daniel James Brown
"Station Eleven" - Emily St. John Mandel
"To Rise Again at a Decent Hour" -Joshua Ferris
"Little, Big; or, The Fairies' Parliament" - John Crowley
"Dawn (Xenogenesis, book 1)" - Octavia E. Butler
"Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig" - Mark Essig
"Thirteen: The Apollo Flight That Failed" - Henry S. F. Cooper
"SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome" - Mary Beard
"Foundation: The History of England, vol. I" - Peter Ackroyd
"The Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President" - Candice Millard
"The Soul of an Octopus" - Sy Montgomery
"Kitchen Confidential" - Anthony Bourdain
"The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers and Guerillas, 1939-1945" - Max Hastings
"Refuge" - Gopalkrishna Gandhi
"Notorious RBG" - Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik
"A Brief History of Misogyny" - Jack Holland
"Conundrum" - Jan Morris
"Murder in Mesopotamia" - Agatha Christie
"Sorcerer to the Crown" - Zen Cho
"The Child" - Sebastian Fitzek
"Stoned: Jewelry, Obsession and How Desire Shapes the World" - Aja Raden
"The War of the Worlds" - H.G. Wells
"The Horla" - Guy de Maupassant
"The Scarlet Death" - Jack London
"Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff" - Pappy Pariah
"How to Survive a Horror Movie" - Seth Grahame-Smith
Audiobook of "Romeo & Juliet: A Novel" - David Hewson/Richard Armitage
"We Have Always Lived in the Castle" - Shirley Jackson

Aside from reading, I adore food (cooking, eating and, well, yes, reading about), soccer, learning new languages (I am fluent in French and can get by in Spanish & Italian but have also studied Japanese, Irish Gaelic & Hebrew, and dabbled a little in Turkish & Romanian--plus, I can sound out the Cyrillic alphabet though I only know about 5 words in any language that uses it), and I'm currently *attempting* Welsh. I enjoy traveling (when I have the time and money), astronomy, watching the Seattle Sounders and Mariners (and occasionally even the Seahawks), yoga/NIA, art (both experiencing and occasionally making), doing crosswords, playing whirlyball and occasionally going out for a bike ride on my decrepit old 1954 Dunelt three-speed. I walk pretty much everywhere, I love rice pudding (sans raisins) and I think giant squids are the coolest animal on earth.

Oh, and the pear was the first of my tattoos.

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