27 Nov 2011

Edwardstreet (or, as she wrote on her name tag, “Edwards Treet”), was the face of the Wellington BookCrossing Unconvention. Sure, there were others on the organising team, but they stayed out of her way. Everyone else sort of slides into the background, really. It might be a crowded street, but nobody stands out quite like the young lady in the...

6 Nov 2011

Every October BookCrossing.com and the rest of the literary world – both producers and consumers – is noisy with people asking each other, “So, are you going to be doing NaNoWriMo this year?” NaNoWriMo, known in full as National Novel Writing Month, is an international scheme for participants to write a 50 000 word novel in the thirty...

15 Oct 2011

Allow me to present EdwardStreet, who is, as you see, one of a kind. Her name has caused some confusion, but she is definitely female, rather than a lane or an avenue. Or a boulevard. She is the only person I know to have attended a BookCrossing convention in Paris, which apparently was held in French and about as organised as you’d expect. Ms Street is...

2 Oct 2011

I could spend hours, nay days, just surfing the blogosphere, riding waves of personal opinion and adventure. So many BookCrossing bloggers! Not that I haven’t contributed to the froth in my own blogs, including this one! Convention reports are always good. Oftentimes they appear long after the event has finished, once the books, the memories, the images...

30 Sep 2011

BookCrossing flashmobs, by their very nature, are usually so restrained as to be almost invisible. A bunch of people reading. Hardly compares with dozens of people breaking into impromptu dance routines or pillow fights, intended to astonish random onlookers. From the British BookCrossing Unconvention recently held in Nottingham comes this tale of a flashmob...

29 Sep 2011

I love BookCrossing conventions. Books, BookCrossers, travel, good food and drink, history, trivia, friendships old and new. There’s something magic about rambling down a city street, hanging books off statues, leaving them on benches, thrusting them into the hands of curious onlookers, feeding off everyone else’s nuttiness. New Zealand BookCrossing...