Halleluja, I’m a bum…

In a rare break from the rain, I trotted off to the Brixton Post Office yesterday, to pick up the latest book that’s come my way from BookMooch.

It was a copy of The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper - a book I have loved for a very long time. I started reading it in the bath last night, and even though it’s been well over fifteen years since I last read it, it all just came flooding back to me. The very real fear that she describes, the magic, the ancient story - it’s a kicking book. Now I need to mooch the rest of the sequence.

BookMooch has actually become quite a major part of my life, and not just because they’re just about the only people who email me with any regularity. It’s because it’s a space that manages to combine everything I love about the digital world (an online community with it’s own economy, etiquette, rhythms and values) and the very analogue world of books and post offices and stamps and old fashioned stuff like that. There is enourmous joy to be had in getting a parcel from another country, from a person who has, at one point or another, shared a taste for the same book, and who you’ve made contact with online. It’s like all my Hanukkah’s rolled into one, I tell you.

I’m sending two books off today as well, which is the other great thing about BookMooch - the books you don’t want, can’t read, couldn’t love or never got round to opening and actually don’t think you’ll like are guaranteed to make someone else’s day.