Hi Ladies,
I recently joined Swaptree: http://www.swaptree.com, and thought I'd share. You easily post what books and music CDs you have that you don't want anymore and then create a list of books and music that you want. The website automatically matches you with someone who has what you want and is willing to exchange for what you have.
For example, I posted 20 books that I am willing to swap. Out of those, 4 of them were already on other peoples' "want list" and i can choose from a list of over 1500 books or music CDs (and even a few DVDs) that people are willing to trade for my books. There is a 1 to 1 ratio so whether you post a CD, DVD, or book, you must be willing to trade it for 1 item. I haven't posted a "want" list yet but it's nice knowing i could have my choice of all those books.
I thought it would take a long time to enter all my books in but you just type in the ISBN number next to the barcode on the book (or the barcode number on a CD/DVD) and the website finds the cover for you. It took me 5 minutes to enter 20 books.
All you pay is shipping (media mail is cheap) to send your book and you can swap books and CDs. I heard about it on Today Show a while ago but just got around to making an account. I thought this would be great especially among the group if anyone has books they want to swap. We could also consider swapping books within our group if anyone's interested.
Hope you're having a good week.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
December 2008 Book Pick
First of all I would like to thank everyone for coming over last night. I hope you had a good time.
We have picked The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls as our book for December. The meeting is on December 3rd and Mikie is hosting. This should be an interesting book for the club since it's a memoir and so far we have only read fiction. So look out for an Evite and hope to see everyone next month. Also, the following is an editorial review for The Glass Castle from Amazon.com. I thought it was pretty interesting and I hope you will too. Happy Reading!
Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's child rearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover. --Brangien Davis
We have picked The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls as our book for December. The meeting is on December 3rd and Mikie is hosting. This should be an interesting book for the club since it's a memoir and so far we have only read fiction. So look out for an Evite and hope to see everyone next month. Also, the following is an editorial review for The Glass Castle from Amazon.com. I thought it was pretty interesting and I hope you will too. Happy Reading!
Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's child rearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover. --Brangien Davis
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