Friday, April 21, 2017

FIVE for FRIDAY: HAPPY BOOK CROSSING DAY!

Happy International Book Crossing Day, everyone!
What's Book Crossing day, I hear you ask? Well, sit your jimmy-jammied little bot-bots down, and I'll tell you. Are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then I'll begin.
Book Crossing is a fun little website wherein you can release books into the wild, tagged with a barcode, and watch them as they are shared across the known world by people who are prepared to let them go once they've finished reading and go onto the website to log the wheres and the whens of the controlled release program. Think of it like tagging sharks for scientific purposes, without the wet and the cold and the seasickness and the risk of getting your bollocks gnawed off. Assuming you don't try to release the book in Mirrabooka, anyway. There's a whole lot to learn at the Book Crossing website, including the fact that they have a Day, and it's today!
So to celebrate, I'm releasing five books into the wild today, and these are they, along with the links to their Book Crossing records so you can watch them disappear into obscurity along with the rest of us.
Five for Friday: Books Away!
1. The Marching Dead by Lee Battersby
Marching Dead
Released: Baldivis Shopping Centre food court.
Well, why not? I've got some extra copies kicking about. Let's see how far we can get one copy to run.

2. Storm Front by Jim Butcher.
Storm Front
Released: Rockingham Shopping Centre food court.
The first of Butcher's Harry Dresden novels, it's a wonder that any more of them were picked up. back in 2012, I called it "choppy, badly balanced, written with the kind of breezy lack of depth I'd normally associate with a Star Trek or Star Wars tie-in," in a 2-out-of-5 review on Goodreads. Maybe 5 years later is the right time to give it its freedom......

3. A Father's Story by Lionel Dahmer
dahmerbook
Released: Baldivis Plaza public seating.
One of the most awful books I've ever read, I probably should feel a little guilty at inflicting it upon some unsuspecting passerby whose only crime is to be attracted to the idea of a free book. I gave it a withering one-star review on Goodreads, and it'll be a relief to get it out of my house. If you're the person who picked it up, and you've made your way here, I'm sorry. I'm so, so, sorry.

4. The Chosen Queen by Joanna Courtney
courtney
Released: City of Rockingham tea room.
A donation by Luscious, whose comment was simply "Not as good as Philippa Gregory." That's still a pretty high bar, so let's hope someone enjoys it.

5. The Teacher's Secret by Suzanne Leal
leal.jpg
Released: Rockingham Arts Centre forecourt.
Another donation from Luscious, she tells me that it was a good read, but a once-only affair: read it, finished it, don;t need to read it again.
So there we are: 5 books out in the wild, ready to travel the world and open their pages to the riffling fingers of strangers. Let's wish them well and see where they go.

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