A great idea

What If Everyone on Twitter Read One Book?

The thought struck me that Twitter would provide a much better platform for a book club than the mere accident of physical proximity. Just think, we could supplant #howyouathug with #chapterfourexegesis in trending topics! Actually, no, we probably couldn’t, and that’s not the goal anyway. I love books. So do you. Let’s love one book together, our actual geographical location be damned.

Here’s how it’d go:

* Now: We collect nominations for what book we want to read. Take the Reddit poll at the bottom of this story to make suggestions and vote up and down the suggestions of others.
* Soon: We pick a winner out of the top selections. Why not just pick the one with the most votes? Because it’s not too hard to game the system. The final selection needs to be of general interest. It needs to be translated into many, many languages, and ideally it should be freely available.
* Soon after that: We start reading, and tweeting, and reading, and tweeting.

In the meantime, the hashtag for One Book, One Twitter is #1b1t. If you want to keep up-to-date, follow me @crowdsourcing.

So far it looks like Fahrenheit 451 is a clear favourite. What book would you like? Go to the link and vote!

Oh, I forgot

I recently mailed two books to other members of Paperback Swap, and they've both received them, so I had two credits to spend on books of my own. I chose 100 Hair Raising Little Horror Stories (which is on its way) and The Runes of the Earth (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant) by Stephen R Donaldson. So far, oddly enough, I've put in for books that happen to be hardcover. I have the second Thomas Covenant book, but not the first. I loved the prior two trilogies, even though Thomas is not a particularly sympathetic character. They are excellent reads, though. The horror stories book contains short stories by classic horror authors, including HP Lovecraft. It happens to be a companion volume to the first book I got through the club, which was a collection of ghost stories. If you like to read and have some books you don't mind sending to others, be sure to check out their website. It's fun and free.

I found a nifty website today

called PaperBackSwap. On it you post books that you no longer want that you are willing to mail to another member, and then you get credits for each book that you can then spend on a book for yourself. You get two free credits to start with when you put 10 books into the system. Since I need to weed the home library, I went ahead and posted a few and I've ordered my first book (Anne Perry's Bluegate Fields, which I keep missing in the bookstores and have never gotten around to special ordering). The only drawback is that you're giving some total stranger your mailing address, but it can be any legitimate one. I could use the hospital, but I thought it would be easier to just have it sent home. So we'll see. Hopefully I won't wind up with some bibliophile stalker.

Oh, and the nice thing, too, is that it's free (although they do reserve the right to charge in the future, they also promise to give plenty of warning should they go to that model.) Anyway, try it out. It sounds like fun. I'll update when I know how things turn out from my order.

PS I just put in for my second book, 100 Ghastly Little Ghost Stories, which includes stories by Lovecraft and Bierce among others.

Bless You, US Postal Service

Who figured out my apartment number and delivered my One Spirit books.

I got a nice big box with:
The Secret Language of Birds
Tibetan Meditations
Chakra Meditation Kit
Healthy Brain Kit
The Complete Guide to Chinese Calligraphy
How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
Self-Hypnosis Diet

and a Black and Ivory tote bag. :)

Five of the books were 40 cents each, and two were 50% off. The bag was free. I only have to buy 2 books in 2 years. Plus, with online shopping these days, I'm better at dealing with accepting or rejecting featured selections. Of course, it's the shipping that kills you. :) Still, not a bad haul. I went back and looked online whilst linking and the only one that gets substandard reviews in the chakra kit, because the man on the CD apparently does not have a soothing voice. I'll have to listen for myself. I'm especially interested in the Healthy Brain kit, which has a CD, book, and cards of mental exercises to stay sharp. I so need that. Plus, I've always wanted to know what various Chinese characters you see in calligraphy really mean. :)

Wow

This morning when I tested my blood sugar, it was 230. Then I took the glipizide that Dr Nesbitt prescribed along with my other meds. I just took my blood sugar again before dinner and it's 105. That's within normal range. It's been a long time since I was actually testing normal.

I also went to the dentist today to start the process of getting a crown. They had to do a filling on the tooth behind it and then work on the tooth to be crowned, take impressions, and put a temporary crown on. The impressions will go to a lab and in about three weeks I go back and get the real one put on. It took a couple of hours. This is the first time I've met the new dentist, and I liked him, although I had to be vigilant about the latex gloves (he finally put the box of nitrile ones on top of the latex so he'd remember) and I'd forgotten to tell them I was allergic to Lortab, so he had to re-write me a prescription for Darvocet. The crowned tooth was broken and a piece came out from deep in the gums, so he thought I might need it--although normally I'm pretty good with that kind of pain. (Really intense shooting pain, I'm not so good at.) It was about $340, so thank goodness for flexible spending accounts, although they do break things down in payments for people. The next appointment to get the crown on should take about 15-30 minutes and I'd only have to pay any residual that the insurance won't. But they're supposed to pay 80% for fillings and 50% for crowns, so I should be okay. The nice thing is I could go ahead and eat dinner immediately, since I don't have too much time between work. I just can't have anything really chewy.

Oh, I found out today that in March I'm going to get a 4% raise at the hospital. That translates to nearly $.75 an hour or about $75 net extra a pay period if I did the math right. Yay!

What else? Oh, about a week ago I joined a book club and when I received the confirmation, I realised they'd truncated my apartment number and the books had been shipped to another address. I left a note for the resident at the other apartment and he called me and told me he'd let me know when they come in. Woo-hoo.