Bonjour bomas! Isn't it great to find a site where people can get rapturous and illogical about books (and not have a load of brain-dead gorillas throwing crap at you and hooting with laughter because, like, holy cow, you can read)? Anyhoo reading is wonderful. That is the primary reason I am joining BookCrossing, quite apart from the fact that I adore the whole fate/destiny thing, as well as the idea of giving something and asking for nothing back. Many books have shaped my life and helped my personal growth as a person (sixteen, medium height, excitable, the infinite paradox of GEEKY and BLONDE), as well as contributing to the way I write (I'm thinking of Kate Atkinson, Nabokov, Margaret Atwood, Irvine Welsh, Alan Warner, Ian McEwan, JD Salinger, DBC Pierre, etc). I'm in an international boarding school in the south of France and exams are in two weeks, so my trips to the library are currently somewhat limited (by something as pesky and fiddly as radiation - it's a crime to mix physics and literary aptitude). The great thing about this place is the undeniable weird mixture of language, the Franglish and Frencho-German in the corridors and the English Literature (when your teacher is called Mr Martiny - shaken not stirred - and Irish and hilarious, eg. 'When you see people in pink, you think of giant human sweets' - classic) whilst outside an old Midi granny yells at her small innocent victims (grandchildren) to get the 'ping' (that's bread for the non-francophones among you.) Also I have this bizarre habit where I say more IN brackets than out of em. I loved 'The Old Man and the Sea'; my dad lives in Andalucia and I spent a year and a half there before moving here last September, spanish is my BEST LANGUAGE and I plan, apart from being an eminent, deeply studied poet (duh) to go into interpreting (also travelling the world, obv.) Anyway I'm going to put my gas at a peep now, pleased to meet some fellow bookish connaisseurs, PLEASE do not hesitate to say hello; photos'll be up soon as i get my hands on a digicamera. Toodle-doo.