BookCrossing: Light on Snow

My mother traveled to New Zealand in October and carried along a couple of my BookCrossing books to wild release. One of the books - Light on Snow by Anita Shreve - attracted interest from my uncle who thought that his partner would like to read it. The book was given to him and, presumably, eventually made its way to my uncle's partner.

Yesterday, a journal entry arrived in my email's in-box. While I have my suspicions, I do not know from whom the entry came from. Maybe my uncle's partner, or maybe...? Irregardless of the source, here's the short but sufficient journal entry:

Has been in temporary custody in the Manawatu.

Here's a link to the book on BookCrossing.

BookCrossing: Me Talk Pretty One Day

Way back in the spring of 2005, I handed a book - Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris - to someone who subsequently joined BookCrossing and journaled the book a few days later. Unfortunately, the site seemed to confuse her, as she didn't journal the book under her username. In fact, after journaling anonymously with the original BCID, she actually ended up registering the book, giving it another BCID - which is wrong! wrong! wrong!

I had given up on hearing from the book again, mostly because I had no idea if she had written the new BCID into the book or not. Good news, though. Did you notice how this paragraph's first sentence was written in the past tense? Yesterday, more than three years since its last check-in, I got an email telling me the book was journaled! The finder had used my BCID! Woo-hoo! (Of course, there's a good chance that my BCID was the only one.)

Here's the newest journal entry:

Found this book at a used book store in Steveston BC. I think I will give this book away either on my travels or to a friend, haven't decided yet.

Here's a link to the book on BookCrossing.

he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.

-- Ulysses by James Joyce