Sorry I haven’t updated recently — I’ve had to resist the urge! I wanted to keep the Pay it Forward (my contribution) at the top as long as possible. However, now I’ve found another way to pay it forward. A few weeks ago, I got a load of books off Craiglist, and I only ended up wanting to keep 5 or 6. My parents had a look at them and of the authors they were interested in, they’d already read most of them.

However, tonight I went to a new meet-up from Meetup.com and re-discovered BookCrossing.com!

I’d found some books previously around the city with this BookCrossing.com sticker. The concept is simple: read & release. It’s all tracked online by book ID numbers that you attach to the book, and you can say as much or as little as you like about a book you find. They all get added to my BookCrossing.com “shelf” and as other users log and enter their individual tracking numbers, each book gets updated. So I brought a bag-full of books to the Meetup tonight and I was pleasantly surprised!

Marina, the meet-up organiser, had her computer with her and helped me sign up for BookCrossing (though I could have sworn I had an account many moons ago). Then I registered and “released” all the books I brought with me.

I still have a box load left here in my bedroom (there were 96 in total – including the ones I wanted), so I definitely have something to contribute to literacy in the city! I was thinking of taking the bus with a bag of books and leaving one on every bus I took!

The meetup was great! All the people were really nice and super easy to talk to. Normally I’m a quiet person in groups, but it was totally easy to be myself around such a bubbly, friendly group of people. I definitely will be going next month!