LibraryThing = Gateway Drug

It's not bad enough that I'm obsessed with LibraryThing, it just keeps leading me deeper and deeper into the murky world of Internet book sites. First, I noticed these little arrow symbols with numbers beside them; following the link, I found that they represented the number of people who had the book to give away and those who wanted to receive it. Free books! Could anything be more compelling? (Only if they came with chocolate.)

So soon I was signed up with BookMooch. It's pretty simple: you list the books you have available and the books you're looking for. You ask for the books you want, and people do the same to you. You get points for giving, and give points for getting. I listed a few books available to get myself started, and literally within minutes I had my first few requests. It was a little overwhelming, but very cool.

So far I've sent out 12 books and received four. The balance is important, because you can easily spend a fortune in postage if you don't make it back in books. I'm learning other things as I go too: one receiver grumbled at me because she thought I was sending her a hardback, but it was a paperback; you have to be specific about these things. On my side, I've been holding my nose as I read one book that reeks of cigarette smoke, teaching me the value of looking for senders whose profiles state "smoke-free home."

No sooner did I have that under my belt than my sister-in-law, my reading co-conspirator, invited me to join her on goodreads, yet another site for rating and reviewing your books. Since you can date your reading, I've decided that this site fulfills the purpose of the reading diary I've been keeping since the beginning of the year. Hence, beginning with this month, I won't be posting that on this blog anymore, but keeping it on the goodreads site. (I will still post my movie diary here, though.)

For the love of God, with all this blogging and reading about books, when will I have time to actually read the books????