Taas pieni sivupolku tällä lastenkirja-viikollani. Olen tulossa viikonlopuksi pikavisiitille Suomeen ja ajattelin ottaa samalla mukaan suomenkielisiä Bookcrossing-kirjoja. Jos siis olet kiinnostunut joistakin kuvassa esiintyvistä kirjoista, käy vilkaisemassa BC-nettisivuilta mistä nuo kirjat löytyvät ja lähde metsästämään! Helsingin keskustassa on tarkoitukseni pyöriä.

(Niin ja uutta Nobel-voittajaa en nyt jaksa vielä kommentoida, myöhemmin sitten.)

As I have told I really like the idea of Bookcrossing. And the practise too! One of the best Bookcrossing-experiences I have had was with Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman, A Game of You"-graphic novel. Somebody had left it to a cafe here in Oslo and I took it with me. When I had registered to Bookcrossing-page that I had found the book I one day got email from India(!) from a young woman who was also a bookcrosser. Her boyfriend was going to be 25 years old and because of this she wanted to give him 25 books for present. So this nice girl from India asked if I wound like to send my Sandman-book to her when I had read it. And well, that's exactly the idea of Bookcrossing, so of course I wanted to do it! So I read this book (and liked it a lot!) and after that I sent it to India to this woman who gave it to her boyfriend who obviously had a very nice birthday (who wouldn't with 25 new books?) and he also liked this graphic novel and so everybody lived happily ever after.

Don't you just have to love Bookcrossing?

As I have already told you I really like this Bookcrossing-thing! I like it especially now when I start to get messages from people who have found my books!

To those who don't know what Bookcrossing is: you read a book, register it in internet and make a small journal entry about the book. Then you leave it to some public place where whoever can find it. Hopefully the founder of the book reads it too, goes to web and tells what she liked about it and gives it away again. Every book has its own ID-number so you can follow where "your" books are going. Of course it might happen that you won't hear anything about your books ever again. But sometimes you can hear that the book you have given away have been enjoyed by many other readers around the world!

So far my favorite book is the one that has travelled from Oslo to Lisbon and is now heading to Helsinki! I also found myself one book that had travelled from USA to Iran and from there to Norway. I took it with me to Finland but after that I haven't heard from it. I hope someone will journal about it eventually. 

The last BC-book that I found (from Bookcrossing-bookshelf from Oslo's railway station) was Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Niggers" (I think the new, more political correct name is "And Then There Were None"). After "Agatha Christie And the Eleven Missing Days" I really wanted to read some of her books and I got really happy that I found this one. I read it first time maybe 15 years ago but I didn't even remember who was the killer. It's a really masterpiece! Lovely, lovely book with lots of killing! 

I have also found two Jodi Picoult's books that I still haven't have time to read. I have no idea if they are good or bad, but Jodi Picoult seems to be popular among bookcrossers because the other one I found from Oslo and the other one from Tampere.

Here's a picture of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" waiting for a reader in a tram. I found the book, read it (I had read also this one earlier, one of my ultimate favorites!) and I left it to a very popular tram in Oslo one morning. I haven't heard from it since, but I hope someone found it and is enjoying it right now.

And of course, all those books that I bought from Finland on my holiday are heading back there. I just read them first myself and register them and then send them to Finland to make Finnish bookcrossers happy.

For a long time now I have really liked the idea of Bookcrossing. (=You read a book, register it in web and release it somewhere in the world to let someone else to find it. Hopefully this person goes also to the web-page and let you know he has found your book, then he reads it and releases it again. And so on... This way the whole world becomes a one big library!)

But for some reason I haven't had energy or time or whatever to take part of it myself. Now I have finally started! This morning I released my first three books. Neil Gaiman's "American Gods", Doris Lessing's "The Fifth Child" and Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men". I wanted to start with something I really like. I know many people like to release books they don't want themselves or books they don't even like. I think I try to give away also those books that have really ment something to me. I hope they will find their way to good people and touch someone else's life too.

These books I left to Oslo's railway station because there is special place for Bookcrossing-books where you can leave your books and pick up something else. From there I also took one book with me, collection of H.C.Andersen's stories. More of those later!

Next books I will release "totally free" to some cafe, a bench or a bus, we will see.

I'm also going to take Finnish Bookcrossing-books with me to Finland in August and let them fly free. Go hunting!