Now I'm in love with Book Crossing.

The Crusie's got to go, but perhaps after I've read some more.

erika beat me to it.

Somebody tell me that if I put the porch swing up, I may not spend the rest of the afternoon reading gardening books and drinking lemonade? The party is Friday, and there's too much to do.

I'm sorry...apart from my mom, I'm a total MZ, is all. There's a whole chapter in "Women who Run With The Wolves" on it.

From the last 6 months, I have really liked the following:

Mystic River
Coraline
Middlesex
Fast Women
A Gracious Plenty
Girl with a Pearl Earring
A Cold Day for Murder

I have liked enough to keep them (or would if they were mine to keep):

Cold Mountain
You are not a a stranger here
Play with Fire

I have started a lending circle for my Crusie's and will do so with my Lippmans and Lehane's also. Everything else either gets sold on half.com or released ala bookcrossing.com.

I've never read it either. It just happened to be a book that wasn't available at my grade school.

That’s okay, because your aren’t a full,tenured English professor at a highly respected institution of higher learning.

When I like something, I don't want to give it back. And I form an irrational attachment to the actual physical book I read the first time. No, I don't want a shiny new one of my own, I want this on

me too. Plus, I can’t wrap my mind around spending money for something I’ve already read. It’s why I don’t own many DVDs. I don’t want to spend money on a movie I haven’t seen, I might hate it, and once I’ve seen it, why spend money on it. I guess I’m just cheap.

I had too many bad books from my book-of-the-month club phase, and not enough shelves.

I have a hard time throwing books away. If I really hate it, I might give it away, but that’s hard, because I don’t want to inflict a bad book on anyone else. For example, my mother gave me a copy of “the Rules”. I will never read it, yet I can’t bring myself to throw it away. In fact, it is turned around in my bookshelf because I am ashamed to own it, but still, I don’t throw it out. I need help.

Vortex, this is when you leave the book on a stoop somewhere. Someone will pick it up and read it, and it's out of your hands.

I have a hard time throwing books away. If I really hate it, I might give it away, but that’s hard, because I don’t want to inflict a bad book on anyone else.

Prisons, libraries, homeless shelters, hospitals. Any and all of them are a better place for a book that is taking up physical space on your shelves and wasting mental energy that could be spent on something you enjoy. Someone, somewhere, will like it; it's okay to admit that you don't, or you once did and don't anymore, and let it go. This one was tough for me, and I'm still learning it.

Someone, somewhere, will like it; it's okay to admit that you don't, or you once did and don't anymore, and let it go. This one was tough for me, and I'm still learning it.

I can do this. Of course, giving this particular book away will involve admitting to someone that I actually owned it. Or I can leave it furtively somewhere, like porn. No, not like porn, 'cause I'm not ashamed to own porn. Or wouldn't be if I had any.

I'm guessing that everyone in the thread swooned during the scene in the Disney Beauty and the Beast when the Beast gave a multi-story library to Beauty. I know I did. A friend called me up and said, you have to see this movie because you'll love this scene about a library - trust me, just go see it.

Having a library like that was my dream when I was younger and I was working towards it when I realized that I'd run out of space and that I could take a trip to a warm water island instead for the cost of keeping buying books.

...sigh. Beast's library had the rolling ladder on tracks, too.