Catch up: SP Exchange, a Mystery that keeps on growing, and a round of smooches

I got my package from my Knittyboard Summer Loving Exchange:

BFL (that's Blue-Faced Leicester, a breed of sheep) top (combed fiber), thank you cards, a notepad and stitch markers.

I've been busily working on my Slow Bee Mystery II stole, now finished clue 10, with 5 more to go and then the second half to complete:

Meanwhile, back at the book shelves, a bad case of smooching has broken out at LibraryThing.  Thingamabrarians have been anonymously smooching each other over at BookMooch.  When you smooch someone, you give them the gift of a book point, worth a whole book choice.  I received two smooches in one day, and gave some to others too.  The only problem was that my first few choices for smoochees turned out to each have about 50 points accumulated in their accounts already.  I was afraid it would just be an empty gesture, albeit a nice and well-appreciated one, to give them the points, so I had to do a little digging to find members of both LT and BM who were newer or lower in points but had active accounts.  It's quite fun both to give and to get a smooch, as I'm sure you can imagine (think figuratively or literally here, I'm open).

Tuesday Thingers:Books on the Move

Today's topic: Book-swapping. Do you do it? What site(s) do you use? How did you find out about them? What do you think of them? Do you use LT's book-swapping column feature for information on what to swap? Do you participate in any of the LT communities that discuss bookswapping, like the Bookmooch group for example?

I'm a BookMooch junky/hoverer/stalker. I love Mooching. I accidentally wound up with 2000 of the little BM business cards and I give them out everywhere (gave one to the lady at the PO yesterday when I sent out some books, in fact).

I just launched my first BM Journal: The BookMooch Needle Arts and Fiber Arts Journal! Go on, add it to your wishlist.

I love, love, love that LibraryThing has a book-swapping column. Every single time someone mentions a book that sounds good, I immediately use it to add to my wishlist. Of course, that might account for the fact that my wishlist is now 550+ and growing daily, but still....

I am a member of the LT BM forum. I'm a reasonably active poster there, and like the discussion. I never use BM's own boards, so I get my info and advice here. I did in fact learn about BM from LT; I think there were a couple of people with whom I was corresponding, and I noticed they were both members from their profile pages, so I checked it out and never looked back!

I only wish there was some way to get more people with books sitting around they'll never want or use to list those on BM so I could Mooch them right up.

I have such a strong relationship with books that for years I have had trouble giving them up. Books I'll never re-read, ones I'll never use, ones I wouldn't recommend to my kids, ones I bought and never bothered reading; I kept them all. Two things are getting them off my shelves, and those two things are LT and BM. LT because if the book is in the house I am compelled to catalog it; if I don't want it in the catalog, I have to inventory it and get rid of it now. BM because it gives me a sense that the books I don't appreciate are actually wanted by someone; rather than trying to convince myself I should donate or sell the book to a shop where it may sit on the shelves for decades, unwanted and unappreciated, when I Mooch a book out I can feel like I am helping someone else and getting them a book they actually desire or need. It's a very powerful motivator and a psychological impressor that I need to override my book-owning obsession. I'm actually quite grateful I have found both the LibraryThing community and the BookMooch service.

Tuesday Thingers: Popular books

Today's Question: What's the most popular book in your library? Have you read it? What did you think? How many users have it? What's the most popular book you don't have? How does a book's popularity figure into your decisions about what to read?

Well, the most popular books we do own are the Harry Potter series (which we have complete, with multiple copies of almost all of them, and copies in French of at least 4 of them; at one point we had a copy of Half-Blood Prince in Hebrew, but we lent it out and didn't get it back). Harry aside, the next most popular that we have is The Hobbit, of which again we have multiple copies, including an old paperback and a hardback commemorative edition with a protective box, runes all around it, and so on. Going on down the list, we have all the ones that are classics: Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, LOTR of course (only one copy, though, go figure). To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm actually not sure we have Catcher in the Rye; it was never one of my favorites at all.

What we don't have are the modern popular fiction: The Da Vinci Code, The Kite Runner. While the more literary and evocative ones like the latter might be excellent literature, they just don't appeal to me. They're too adult for the kids, and Jeffrey doesn't read books (he just doesn't have time) for the most part, so they're not taking up space on our shelves. I've occasionally read popular fiction (A Suitable Boy and Barbara Kingsolver spring to mind for some reason), but only rarely, and even less often to I find it meaningful to me.

What strikes me most of the list is that there aren't any books on it which we don't own that I want to run out and get. A book's popularity rarely makes a difference to me. In fact I think I take something of a perverse pleasure in not reading what everyone else chooses. Aside from classics, if a book is on a best-seller list, I probably won't be interested in it. Not because I'm trying to make a statement, but just because somehow over the years I've discovered I just won't enjoy most of those works.

Now excuse me, after all this high-mindedness, I have to go hide all my trashy, silly, cozy mystery novels.

I know I'm running way behind

Just a really quick catch-up with no photos and no details:

Shavuos is over and was lovely despite the heat.
Addie is almost but not quite walking; her first birthday on the secular calendar is this Friday!
I'm working on Clue 5 of my Slow Bee Mystery shawl. I keep making mistakes but on this clue I'm ripping back and fixing them. I know, what a radical idea. I hope to be caught up at the end of the week despite the yom tov intervening.
I have something like 10 books to mail out for BookMoochers, so if you're waiting on one, expect me to notify you this evening that it's in the mail.
Gilad still seems to have a mild tummy disturbance; I'm guessing he has a bit of a bacterial icky thing going on but since it's already been about 2-3 weeks without getting any worse there doesn't seem to be anything we can do except wait it out and continue to maintain good hygeine.
Gilad is reading more and more though he still doesn't admit it.
School ends next week and I'm totally flustered about who's going where when and with what or whom for camp. I've got to get this more under control in my mind.

Anyway, more details in the upcoming few days as I catch up in the lazy hot days of summer.

My books

I've started cataloging my books on LibraryThing as you all may know. I've gotten about 720 in so far, and extrapolating to what's sitting around the house I realize we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 4500-5000 books. If anything, that's a low estimate. And we're not shy about using the library, either.
I go into some people's houses and they have one, maybe two shelves of books; others have bookcases covering every free wall of every room and every staircase. Needless to say, I feel more at home in the latter. My parents have some books, but nothing like our library. We have bookcases everywhere, every child's room has at least one, many of our shelves are double-shelved. There are books piled on my nightstand, books on Kayla's floor, books in 9 month old Adele's room.
I am spending a lot of time on BookMooch now trying to get rid of books we'll never use or never read again (nasty science fiction, lovely craft books of crafts we'll never actually take up, duplicates of mysteries I didn't realize I had already bought, and more). I'm racking up the points sending them out, and I don't want to use the points to bring in more books right now (I should just donate the points right away so I can't use them). There have been times when I have brought 5-6 grocery bags at a time to donate at the library book store and we STILL have all these books (what in the world have I already given away?!)!
I realize I have a very deep relationship with my books. I can't bring myself to give up a good book. I re-read, I treasure, I love them. I can't pass up a good read, and I am somewhat obsessed with providing good books for my children. Books the older children all hate I keep on the chance that in a few years one might change his or her mind, or one of the younger ones may have a different opinion. Books that are classics I stock around the house just in the hopes that one child or another will pick it up at some point (it's worked with Heidi, The Little Princess, The Secret Garden, Little Women, Black Beauty, and more). I've started searching out books I read as a teenager to see if they pique the girls' interest the same way (Tirtze does like Nancy Springer, but rejects H. Beam Piper; she hasn't really checked out Mary Stewart yet--I have to find the werewolf one).
My name is Leesy, and I'm a bookaholic. I don't think I'm ready for recovery.