Friday 16 May 2008

BookMooch


Anyone else use bookmooch? Perfect for people who cannot bear to throw books out, give them away and receive other ones in their place. It's like a present through the post from strangers. You put up a list of books you're never going to read again (you know you have them) at least 10. And a wishlist of books you would like. And see if you get any matches.

The list of most mooched books is interesting.

Kim Edwards The Memory Keeper's Daughter 857 1
Khaled Hosseini The Kite Runner 641 0
Sue Monk Kidd The Secret Life of Bees 477 10
Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Vintage Contemporaries) 474 1
Gregory Maguire Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West 423 0
Yann Martel Life of Pi 418 0
Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper: A Novel 380 0
Azar Nafisi Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books 321 1
David Sedaris Me Talk Pretty One Day 320 0
James Frey A Million Little Pieces 311 96
Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex: A Novel 303 0
Anita Diamant The Red Tent: A Novel (Bestselling Backlist) 292 0
Philippa Gregory The Other Boleyn Girl 274 0
Erik Larson The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (Vintage) 264 0
Elizabeth Gilbert Eat Pray Love 260 0
Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Vintage) 249 0
Barbara Ehrenreich Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America 248 0
George Orwell 1984 229 0
Lisa See Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel 223 0
John Grogan Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog 208 0

I think the numbers are biased towards US mooches. I wonder what it would look like for Europe/UK/Ireland?

5 comments:

Catherine @ Sharp Words said...

I've lately started BookMooching and am already addicted (with a small pile of Mooched books to read, and quite a few sent out).

The list of most-mooched looks to me like there's a lot of reading group and movie-ised novels; there's a few on there I wouldn't mind reading, but I can always reserve them at the library rather than wait for a copy to show up and mooch it before anyone else!

It's a good way of finding something more obscure though, and of getting rid of some things you know you probably will never read again.

Michelle Dalton said...

I use bookmooch - love it tbh. have gotten some books I really wanted to read and a few that were not great so it made me glad I hadn't spent €12 on them new!

Plus it's great getting exciting surprises in the post :)

Karen said...

Wow, there are an awful lot of Dan Browns and John Grishams on there!

Like Catherine I find it easier to reserve books I want at the library, but it's good to browse BookMooch for titles you may have forgotten you wanted to read.

Samantha said...

Your post made me interested in joining Bookmooch, so I did. But now I'm a bit confused. If you've put up a list of books, and someone mooches, where can you see that? Or do you just recieve an e-mail?

Emerging Writer said...

OK, say you put up a copy of Marian Keyes latest which a number of people are looking for.
Everyone who has that on their wish list gets an email saying it is available to mooch.
One person goes onto the website and mooches it.
You receive and email with their request and you can accept or decline.
That's about it. There's a good summary page on the website.