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Monday, November 29, 2004

a wee bit of a dilemma - the whole truth or just a bit of the truth?


I've mentioned BookCrossing a couple of times now, it is a site which I respect and adore the idea of.
I read the forums from time to time, not intensively - I flick through the Announcements to see if there's anything interesting there, browse Bookrings, Bookrays, and Bookboxes to see if there are any rings or rays I would be interested in joining and read a bit of Site Watch for amusement value.

A couple of weeks ago, I was rather bored and took a look at all of the forums - on one of which I noticed a thread posted by a new author trying to get her recently published first book out into the world. She was offering to send a copy of her book to anyone wishing to read it and release it into the wild.

I thought that was a pretty cool idea so I sent her a message saying that I would happily accept a copy of her novel to release here in Australia. She is - understandably - very excited about the publication of her book and was thrilled to be sending out copies around the world, and so responded with great enthusiasm.

I received the book last week and thought it was fairly exciting to be able to read a book that is fairly hot off the press, for no expense on my part AND I get to set it free!

Now here is the difficult part... I read the book today... and it is crap. The beginning is crap, the ending is crap and pretty much all of the middle is crap. 251 pages of fluffy crap.

I can't really leave a journal entry for this book saying "it was crap - now i will release it" .. I would feel bad. What makes it worse is that another BookCrosser read the book last week and has left a glowing review - thought-provoking, insightful - all of those kind of things. Well I'm afraid I didn't find it at all thought-provoking or insightful, it was just crap.

Here is the draft of my journal entry - I think I will sit on it awhile, I don't want to lie but I don't want to seem too harsh either :-

There were a few parts of the story that tugged at my heartstrings, but overall it was really not my cup of tea and not a writing stle that really grabbed my attention. I found the first chapter to be particularly disjointed, however the continuity did improve.

I wish (the author) luck with the success of this and future books, thank you for allowing me the privilege of receiving the book to release here in Australia.


I was going to email Mrs Hardly and ask for advice, but instead I might just send her the book and see what she thinks hehe :o)







Friday, November 12, 2004


BookCrossing has to be one of the most ingenious ideas ever to have been thought up. The site was first shown to me by Mrs Hardly last year, and I marvelled at the practice of "releasing books into the wild" - simply a fantabulous idea!

Sadly, the lead programmer for BookCrossing, Daniel Clune has been missing for almost a week, without a trace.

Hopefully there will soon be some clue as to what has transpired.







Sunday, November 07, 2004

Floral Surprise


I am a lover of all things cactus. I have collected a variety of cacti over the years and now and then spend time creating my cactus gardens which reside on the front deck.
Some of my cacti have fallen victim to rot as a result of bad drainage and bad dirt, a problem which I have rectfied by mixing soils and changing positions and purchasing new pots.
One of the cacti suffering from rot last year had several pups which appeared to be in good health and so I chopped them off and sat them on some soil before disposing of the mother. The pups eventually grew roots and starting growing - yay!! I kind of forgot about them and left them to fend for themselves, intending to re-pot them "one day".
On arriving home from taking Amarina to school on Tuesday, Bonnie bounded up the stairs before me and started exclaiming about flowers - this is the sight with which I was greeted upon ascending the stairs to the deck: