Friday 20 February 2009

A life-changing website

No, I'm not going to suggest you convert to anything, or send money, but I DO suggest you look at http://bookmooch.com/ which is the brainchild of John Buckman and which has been going for about two and a half years now.

Basically, it's all about swapping the unwanted books you have sitting on your shelf for those which someone else no longer needs, and it has been very thoughtfully devised to be as simple as possible. You get points for sending books, you spend them when you ask for books from other people, and you get fractional points just for listing books - which means you can start mooching as soon as you have listed ten books you no longer need.

Who benefits financially? Mostly the Post Office, as you pay to send out books, and your kind fellow-moochers pay to send you books. John has kindly assumed the running costs up to now, but has recently asked for donations as costs have risen considerably, due to the scale of the project. One gives if one can.

I have found new homes for some very odd and esoteric books and received some very lovely ones in return. There are now over 100 000 members and over 600 000 books available, about two-thirds in the USA and the rest worldwide, so there's a fairly good chance of finding something you'd like to read!

Have fun book-mooching!

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