A Mid-Month Bookish Update

While this isn't the Books of March update (it'll come at the end of March), I decided to post a couple of bookish notes. There are certain authors whose books I buy as they come out, usually in hardback, but these don't keep me in enough reading material to satisfy my reading jones (don't let anyone say I'm not a cool dude - I used "jones" with the addiction definition). Between these "must read" authors, I fill in with a variety of books that look interesting. Often these books I come up with add another author to my "must read" list, but invariably I still need the "filler" books - the books I read in-between the "must read" books. Most of that filler material of late has come by default, with me reading whatever I borrowed from Number One Brother -- and I've already gone through the ones I think might be good and have been working through the ones that don't really excite me. So I was happy to get to go pick up some new stuff at BAM. I got Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani, a double book by Eric Garcia containing Anonymous Rex and Casual Rex, and Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen.

Big Stone Gap looks to be a Jan Karon, Mitford-type book while the double book by Eric Garcia will either be a nice humorous read or too stupid to enjoy. What I read of it in BAM appeared to fall on the nice humorous read side of the fence; hopefully it'll stay there. Tourist Season looked to be your basic detective story, so I should enjoy that one as well. I'll let you know as I read them.

Bookish note number two has to do with the Paperback Swap club, which I joined over the weekend. It allows you to trade books with thousands of other folks, the only expense being your cost in shipping the books. It's not only a great idea for the book-swappers, it's a great business idea for the site developers. The customers do all the work, Paperback Swap just provides the system. At present there is no fee associated with the basic membership, though there are some things on the site that do cost. The system also lets you know there may be a ten-to-twenty buck per-year fee in the future.

I initially loaded the system with around 150 books and have had six requests already. I intend to load it with a lot more books over the coming weeks (I've got some 1,200 paperbacks that have collected over the years) and should be able to get my "filler" reading material there for some time to come. Check it out at Paper Back Swap and if you decide to join use me as the reference if you would - I get a free credit when you start using the system, and you know you want to give me free credits.