11.28.08
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 8.46 am by Caitlin
BookCrossing book is discovered and journalled after three years. Hurray!.
I released this on 19 December 2005 in the little stone play cottage in Birchgrove Oval in Sydney.
Three years later, an anonymous finder has picked it up and left this message:
Journal entry 8 by Members Plus details…AnonymousFinderMembers Plus details… from n/a, n/a n/a on Thursday, November 27, 2008
Found discarded in a local bin.
CAUGHT IN SYDNEY NSW AUSTRALIA
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11.19.08
Posted in BookCrossing, Books, Environment, Family & Friends, London, Media & Internet, Theatre, Travel at 3.16 pm by Caitlin
I’m feeling very excited because I’m off to see Monkey at the O2 tonight. I saw it at the Royal Opera House earlier this year and it was so good I’m going to see it again, this time with a group of friends in tow. I can’t wait!
I’ll write more about Monkey after the event. In the mean time, I have two blog posts to share with you today. Firstly, over on Roaming Tales, I’ve done some follow-up to the Travel Blog Camp in London last week. Secondly, I have a post up about how to combine being green with a love of books at EcoSalon. Enjoy!
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11.17.08
Posted in BookCrossing, Family & Friends, Food at 1.43 pm by Caitlin
Yesterday’s post officially marked the halfway point of NaBloPoMo. I’m pleased to say that I’m still in the game, as are my friends Natalie, Tash Reid, Tash Judd and Jessica.
My post for today is a round-up of foodie links over on my food blog, The Gooseberry Fool. Please check it out!
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08.26.08
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 8.59 am by Caitlin
I released this through BookCrossing at the Oxfam shop in West Hampstead on February 16, 2008. It was picked up by an anonymous finder who wrote this message:
Journal entry 3 by Anonymous Finder from n/a, n/a n/a on Monday, August 25, 2008
brilliant, what a good book. I didn`t want it to end but I still read it in about a week and a half (even though I had many things to do and am not the fastest reader). I recommend it to anyone who likes philosophy or has ever thought about society in a critical way, its complex and very relevant as well as being a beautifully written story full of human character and set in a deeply and thouroughly imagined futuristic world that is so reminiscient of ours and speaks of deep human meanings and purposes.
Beautiful, profound, easy to read, exciting… I don:t know what more to say except that I think its the first book that almost made me cry at the end not because it was sad or full of loss but because it felt so deep and meaningful…
CAUGHT IN LONDON UNITED KINGDOM
book rating: 10 out of 10
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01.25.08
Posted in Arts & Culture, BookCrossing, Books at 1.44 pm by Caitlin
Since I have just spent two or so weeks in Brooklyn, it is fitting that when I arrived home to London a copy of Betty Smith’s classic novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was waiting on my doorstep. It was a BookCrossing copy, and had come to me from the US via Canada and the UK and will be winging its way to Portugal next.
This is the tale of the Francie Nolan and her family, growing up poor in early 20th century Brooklyn. It’s a portrait of the poor people of Brooklyn and of Francie herself, an intelligent, imaginative child. The dogged determination of the tree growing up towards the sunlight, no matter what the obstacles, is a poignant metaphor for Francie’s coming of age. The writing has a deft but light touch and interesting in the way that it does not progress in a strictly linear fashion.
It reminded me a fair bit of Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South, which is set in the slums of inner-city Sydney during the Great Depression. It’s also about a poor Irish immigrant family in the new world and the challenges and prejudices they face, although it’s set about 20-30 years later than A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and in a different city, on a different continent.
The setting is Brooklyn, mostly Williamsburg and a bit of Greenpoint in north Brooklyn. This area is now very trendy, populated with young urban hipsters and also a large Hasidic Jew population. I spent a little time there and this was where the fabulous Queen’s Hideaway restaurant is. However, I stayed mostly in south Brooklyn, around the Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens area.
This is part of my challenge to read the top 100 books of the 20th century. All previous entries are on this site, and also on a dedicated site Century of Books. I’ve read 15 from the list since I started and I’m now at 40, with 60 to go.
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07.11.07
Posted in BookCrossing at 12.55 pm by Caitlin
At the Brighton Unconvention, we were given a preview of some of the exciting plans for the site. I couldn’t blog about all of them at the time because they were still secret, but now I can reveal that Singapore is becoming an official BookCrossing country.
It seems odd since I think the idea of leaving books in public places is slightly subversive and Singapore has a fairly authoritarian government but it makes sense because Singapore has a strong emphasis on literacy and is geographically small enough for the concept to work. The deal was struck directly with the Singaporean premier, which is pretty cool!
Meanwhile, I have put photos up from the weekend on Flickr and there is a badge on my previous blog entry. I have had one wild catch from the weekend.
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07.07.07
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 6.52 pm by Caitlin
I released this on the mass releasing walk at the 2007 BookCrossing Unconvention in Brighton on Sunday 1 July 2007. I left it under the stone archways at the entrance to the Brighton Royal Pavilion. It was picked up by a member of the public, who joined and left this journal entry a few days later.
Journal entry 5 by charliebean from london, Greater London United Kingdom on Wednesday, July 04, 2007
i didnt like the illustrations at all.
but its funny because ive learnt french this year, so i understamd all the text, but i was a bit disappointed by the story.
CAUGHT IN BRIGHTON SUSSEX UK – ANGLETERRE
book rating: 3/10
Read all journal entries here.
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07.02.07
Posted in BookCrossing, Books, Family & Friends at 9.58 am by Caitlin
A weekend at the seaside filled with books and socialising – what more could a girl want? (Okay, so I can think of a few things, but it was lots of fun all the same).
I spent the weekend in Brighton at the 2007 BookCrossing Unconvention (so called because the official Convention is usually in the US). I’d been to Brighton once before, for a weekend away with my boyfriend, and I loved it, so it was good to go back. Brighton is a really funky little city with great restaurants and boutique stores and general good vibes. It’s also wonderful to see the ocean and have that feeling of space that comes with seeing the horizon, even if it was actually too cold and wet to go swimming.
Brighton is only an hour and a half on the train and the train actually comes right through my part of London so I didn’t have to trek into central London first. I stayed at the Genevieve Hotel, a very nice B&B a couple of hundred metres from the sea, sharing a room with another BookCrosser from Devon.
The Unconvention was on Saturday and included a speech from the new CEO about the future of BookCrossing and author talks – Linda Gillard, Christine Coleman, and Sue Moorcroft – a writing workshop with Linda Gillard, live book swaps, and plenty of food, wine and chat. We split into smaller groups for dinner on Saturday night and then rounded it off with a walking tour (releasing books as we went) of Brighton on Sunday morning. I also went running both days, and was joined by three others on Sunday morning – most unlike BookCrossers!
Previous BookCrossing Unconventions have been in Birmingham. Next year we are hosting the official worldwide Convention in London, and I believe San Francisco will have an Unconvention.
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01.10.07
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 4.17 pm by niltiac
Last night’s meetup for BookCrossing was a literary quiz as a fundraiser for RNIB for talking books.
Last night we raised £187 – to be added to the £453 already raised – but the target is £2000 – the cost to produce one talking book. A whopping 96% of books are never made available to people with sight problems and RNIB is campaigning to change this. People with sight problems want to read the same book, at the same time, at the same price, as sighted people. Please donate here if you would like to help.
It was at the recently refurbished Barley Mow near Westminster and it was great fun! Not just because I was on the winning team either!
The questions were mostly not too difficult but there were a few curly ones. It opened with a section on famous first lines – we were given the line and had to name the book and author. Some were easy, such as the famous “It’s a truth universally acknowledged…” line from Pride and Prejudice. Others were more difficult and I was particularly proud of myself for recognising the first line of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, which very few other people got.
We also had a London round (eg. Q: From what London borough did the pilgrims set of from in The Canterbury Tales? A: Southwark), a picture round (identifying fragments of covers), a talking book round (identifying the narrator – I was terrible at this!), a general round (eg. Q: What was the name of the farm in Animal Farm before the revolution? A: Manor Farm – a very lucky guess on our part), and a dates round that was made easier by general as well as literary clues.
We had a good team with different strengths. All of us knew the answers to many of the questions but my team members were able to deal with questions on Samuel Pepys and Chacuer, while I knew that Lady Lazarus was written by Sylvia Plath (I studied Plath in high school) and that the Japanese TV show based on Journey to the West was Monkey (I’m a child of the ’80s after all!).
It came down to an exciting conclusion after we tied with another team, both got the tiebreaker question (Q: Shakespeare was born and died on the same date, what was the day and month? A: 23 April – the same as St George’s Day) correct, and then had to guess the quizmaster’s age to clinch the prize money.
We had our pick of the prizes and I took home a Crabtree & Evelyn gift pack of jojoba goodies.
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11.09.06
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 11.17 am by niltiac
I released this book in the Borojo Juice Bar in Clapham on 20 August 2006. One of the employees has found it, joined BookCrossing, and left this message.
Journal entry 6 by Wuasaby from London, Greater London United Kingdom on Thursday, November 09, 2006
I’ve found this book at the Borojo Juice Bar where I work, in Clapham North, London. A fantastic book, full of things I didn’t know and others which I thought I knew, but were wrong. Still reading it.
book rating: 10/10
Read all journal entries here.
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