While surfing the internet this evening I stumbled upon something hilarious…bookcrossing.com.

The theory is that a bookshelf full of books is rather boring, sending your books off to travel is far more entertaining. You take books, register them with www.bookcrossing.com and receive a special ‘BCIT’ number. This number you clearly label in your book, with instructions to go to Bookcrossing.com. Then, leave your book in a spot someone will find it. It helps, apparently, to label the book on the front with a “free book” statement.

So the idea is that random passerby #1 will pick up your book, head to the website and quickly journal where the book was found and what they are doing with it (reading it, putting it back, or moving it to a new location). When finished reading it, they drop it for random passerby #2 to find, and so on.

So far they’re only getting about a 20-25% ‘found’ rate with the books. In Canada there are 2,859 books currently out ‘in the wild’. That means that there are over 2,000 books out there to be found! But where can you find one of these cool books?

Why not start with the ‘hunting page’. There was nothing listed for Squamish, but if I was back in Richmond Hill…two books were left on a bench in Hillcrest mall just over an hour ago.

Keep your eye out for orphaned books!

-Dave

The book “Never Hitchhike on the Road Less Travelled”. It’s a collection of some interesting travel stories, and at $4.99 on sale at chapters, how can you lose? For a quick read, that is definitely ‘light’, it’s worth it for pre-bedtime pages or a quick subway book. Reading about the various travelling mishaps, horrible hotels and interesting locals got me thinking a lot about stuff I’ve done in the past. For the past three days, while reading the book, I’ve gone to sleep thinking back to the Grand Canyon, the Death Valley Trip, the ghetto of Chicago, midnight strolls through Detroit alley-ways, late nights on the Sea to Scream highway, and all the other crazy things I’ve done in the past. I think this quote from the book pretty much sums up my greatest adventures of the past:

“The difference between a sensational day and a horror story is all in whether or not you live to tell about it.” - William Thomas

Warwick, I hope you’re prepared mate…

-Dave

Clearly I have too much time on my hands…either that or I’m avoiding cleaning and purging. Hmmmm…maybe both!?!

Thinking about it, doing a simple list of my books doesn’t do any of them justice. If you were, hypothetically, going to be exploring my bookshelf you’d be pulling down the books that interest you…checking out the cover and probably asking me about why I own them. Who are we kidding, I’d be telling you even if you didn’t ask.

Here’s a peek at some of my bookshelf…

Automotive Related Books
Mountaineering Related Books
History Related
Future Books
The Rest of the List

-Dave

Tonight I was in Chapters looking for a birthday gift for my Mom. The last couple of birthday’s I’ve bought her Vinyl Cafe books, and went looking to see if there were any new ones or ones she didn’t have.

I realized something while walking around chapters…I love books. Within five minutes I had found three books that either I really wanted to read and had forgotten about, or were new that I didn’t know about but wanted to read. By the time I located the Vinyl Cafe books, and went through the sale shelves, I had found a total of 11 books that were either already on my “books to buy” list in my blackberry, or were added while I was standing in Chapters. I am always reading at least one book regularly. A week doesn’t go by where I haven’t read at least one chapter of something. (more…)