BookCrossing: Free Books for the Finding (or Trading)

BookCrossing is a free, travelling library around the world, based on one website which started it all in 2001.Finish reading a book, go to the site and get an ID number for your book. Leave a review of the book if you like. Leave the book to be found by someone else, randomly. Or, you can trade with other members of the BookCrossing site. Someone may be looking for a copy of the same book. Whoever gets your book can go to the BookCrossing site, look it up by the ID number, see your review, comments about how you found the book, who gave it to you or why you choose to buy that book for yourself. Then the person who has the book from you reads it, leaves their notes and review and releases the book out into the world for someone else to pick up at an airport, a park bench, a bus stop, or maybe a local meeting of BXing (BookCrossing) people.

You may never have heard of BookCrossing (also BC, BCing or BXing) and that's a shame. BookCrossing is how you can find a book lost out in the wild. A wild book is a special thing, not always so easily found when you are actually looking for it.

However, wild books are not dangerous. They won't bite, or scratch. At most you may get a paper cut through mishandling of the book. Bring a book bag, one you can fasten up for good measure. Books have been known to escape after all, you just found one yourself out in the wild!

What Does a Frequent Book Reader Need?

What gadgets and tools does a book reader need? Some extra light for reading at night. A bookstand - especially nice if you're using a cookbook to follow a recipe. Magnification for those words as they seem to get smaller print every year...

Don't forget the bookmarks! How many different bookmarks have you owned over the years? Better yet, how many different things have you used as bookmarks?!

BookCrossing is for Book Readers

BookCrossing is an international network of free, travelling books. Pick one up and pass it along.

Register a book you have read on the BookCrossing site. You don't need to buy the stickers and other accessories. Just write inside the book cover about BookCorssing, explain the book is free (not lost) and should be passed along to someone else. To register a book you just get an ID number for that book in particular. Now, anyone who picks up that book when you release it into the wide world will be able to go to BookCrossing and add themselves (and a review of the book if they read it) to the information which stays with that book and it's ID number on the site.

Ron Hornbaker began BookCrossing. With the help of Ron's wife, Kaori, and cofounders Bruce & Heather Pedersen, the site was launched on April 21st, 2001.

My sister-in-law, Miss Karol, sent me the link to write for SheKnows. I think they are looking for the domestic Goddess, Mother blogger types. But, I sent in a note anyway. I'm working on the 'what can it hurt' theory.

This is what I sent:

Tonight I'm listening to Godzilla roar and knock over most of Tokyo (via Roku) while I change WordPress themes. I'm craving a really good, juicy steak or possibly a rich, gooey chocolate cake. I'm almost 50 (December) and I'm trying to lose weight. It's not easy. But, divorce wasn't easy. Not having children when I thought I'd have at least 5 of them at one point, was not easy. Looking forward to menopause is not easy - but sometimes I do look forward to it.

I'd like to write for SheKnows because I like to try new things. Also, I'd like to see more women my age, my weight and spinster-like, have a voice. I know I'm not the only woman my age online. Yet most of the blogs and sites I read seem to be written by women who are forever 20-something with high heels and small, adorable children.

That's 148 words so I will skip right to the links and writing background.

These are my own sites - in various stages of revamping and repair:\

• http://wordgrrls.com\
• http://thatgrrl.ca\
• http://asciiartist.com\
• http://onlineroadtrip.com\ There are more but these four are in better shape. Especially as I have just been ripping up my themes and sidebar clutter tonight.

I have written for other networks, most of which are gone now. I currently write for Squidoo and HubPages (off and on). You can find links to these accounts and my social media in the top navigation bar on my sites. Also, on Word Grrls the About page has details about sites I have written for in my earlier days online (1996 to now).

My name is Laura Brown and I Am Canadian! (I love that video on YouTube). My email is thatgrrl@gmail.com or Twitter me @thatgrrl. My phone is not mobile - but it is very obedient.

Thanks for reading!

Laura

I really was watching Godzilla tonight too. It gave me the idea for a post which I wrote on Word Grrls.

I'm reading Frankenstein.

I picked an edition which includes a lot of extras, mostly about Mary Shelley, the author and her life. Did you know her Mother wrote a classic book about women and women's rights long before it became a popular issue? Mary was a liberated woman herself. Yet, these ideals must have been given to her from her Father (William Godwin) because she never met her Mother. Mary Wollstonecraft died just after giving birth to her daughter. How did that form Mary and what did it add to her story about creating life, death and regret?

I picked Frankenstein as my classic fiction book to read this year because I do find the theory of reanimating life, animals able to grow back body parts and cloning interesting. Modern science is doing the same sort of research still. I don't think we really do hear about all that goes on in various laboratories around the world. Likely, there are still horror stories being written in the name of science (fame and fortune too).

Did you Know Frankenstein Will be 200 Years Old in 2018?

Frankenstein, the book, is almost 200 years old. The original story was published in 1818, a third edition came out in 1831. This was the final edition, with all her rewrites and additions to the story.

As I read Frankenstein, I am enjoying a glimpse of the past and the old style of writing. It really is more like prose, lines of poetry, than our style of plainer writing these days. I wonder if people also spoke that way or was the writing just that bit more formal.

My nephew, Zack, read Frankenstein for school and said he hated it. I think he just didn't like the style of writing, the prose which goes on and on about scenery and emotions rather than pressing on to move the story ahead or dwell on gruesome details. We are used to such a different way of telling a story these days - this does make it harder to read a book written 200 years ago.

Still I am enjoying the read, the adventure back in history and the idea of recreating life from something dead and how that could work out if I were to write my own story of Frankenstein.

Frankenstein: Read it or Watch it

In the later editions of Mary Shelley's book publishers had her revise the story, make it less shocking for people of the day. You can still find copies of the book, the original story from 1818. However, in the edition I'm reading the actual process of creating the monster is not written about in anything near to the detail which it has been given in the Frankenstein movies.

Also, it's interesting that the books consider the monster to be named Frankenstein. If people refer to Frankenstein they usually mean the monster created by Victor Frankenstein. Actually, in the mind of Victor Frankenstein himself he thinks he is the monster for creating this creature, or daemon has he refers to it more than once in the book.

Frankenstein in Film 1910 and Onwards.

From 1910 to the current I, Frankenstein movie trailer, you can find many versions of Frankenstein to watch. But, read the book at some point. It's the original and the inspiration for all the versions of Frankenstein which have come along since Mary Shelley published her story.

Life Without Soul was the second movie made from Frankenstein but there are no known copies of it surviving.

There had been a theatre production in 1826.

I put my name in to be the Canadian Contributor on Squidoo.

This is what I wrote:

I am a proud Canadian and I do like to write about, research, and teach the world about Canada and Canadians. I already publish a content feed on Scoop.it about Canadiana. Mainly bits of things I find online or happen to think of myself. Scoop.it gives me a place to stash links, share ideas and knowledge. I have over 3,000 views and 41 subscribers, not a lot but it does give me a nice start for promoting any Canadian posts I make as the Squidoo Contributor. Anyway, that's just numbers. The fact is I was born in Toronto and have grown up all over Ontario. As a younger woman I travelled alone across Canada on the Greyhound bus, staying in youth hostels, meeting other young travelers/ backpackers. I do love it here and travelling (on a shoestring) was a great way to see more than the cleaned up tourist places. These days I photograph abandoned, derelict farm houses. Travelling around Ontario (day trips and some over nights) I see a lot of backroads, get coffee in local restaurants and I keep in touch with other explorers across Canada through the groups I founded and moderate on Flickr. I especially like Canadian music, literature and movies/ TV shows. Here we get so much media from the US it can be overwhelming. I make a point to support our own Canadian media by watching and listening to CBC, the oldest Canadian broadcaster and the most Canadian focused of them all. If you want to know about Canadian music, writers and others you can count on the CBC to have current news and old facts in their archives too. I studied Canadian Literature as a course in high school and college. I do read a lot of everything, not just Canadian, but I am aware of Canadian writers and did belong to an online group (until it folded). I had thought to start up another group but that does take a huge amount of time and energy so it on a project on the backburner. Meanwhile I continue to write my site for writers and it does have some focus on Canadian resources (just because that is what I find most useful for myself, as a Canadian freelance writer). I have probably written too much but I would very much enjoy covering the topic of Canada for Squidoo. Partly because as a Contributor I hope to be given some extra promotion on the site and then be read and heard. (So important to feel someone is actually reading and listening). Also, I would be happy to bring some niches of Canadian culture, history and art to light.

I'm sure I had paragraphs but they didn't work with the form used. So it is a solid block of text, mainly here for my own amusement.