--- In [email protected], Kim <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> That you have a book for a while does not mean you plan to keep it.
> For me its not even really about how long you keep a book but what
> your intention is.
Interesting point - but I don't think you can tell what someone's
intention is from their status codes. And even a journal entry
saying "I love this and want to keep it forever" doesn't mean they
truly intend to keep it forever; maybe it's just their way of saying
they love the book.
>
> If you intend to find and keep good books then you're not, in
> my opinion, entering into the pririt of BC.
Again, I think it's hard to know what people's intentions are - but,
in *my* opinion, someone who goes book-hunting because they spotted a
release note for a specific book that they have been desperately
wanting, and that they do intend to treasure and re-read for years to
come - for me, such a person is well within the "spirit of BC," which
I think of as being more about loving books and wanting to get our own
no-longer-read books into the hands of people who do want to read
them. If, having read them, the finders don't want to read them again,
then sure, they should go traveling - but even if they went hunting
with full intent to keep the books, I don't have a problem with it.
> So few books are in circulation, relatively, at this stage that
> having people find and keep them is likely to lead to the demise
> of BC.
Um... where did you get the idea that there are relatively few
books "in circulation"? From the numbers on the current hunting pages,
there are something like 32,000 books in the wild *within the last
month*, and that doesn't count the ones that have been caught already,
or the ones that were passed along without any release notes being
made.
>
> I am suprised at how strongly i feel about this :-)
>
I'm not surprised at the strength of your feelings; I've gotten a bit
exciteable about aspects of BookCrossing myself {grin}. But I do think
that you may not be imagining all the possible situations in which
someone finds a BC book. Sure, there are some whose attitude is "cool,
if I can snag a free book, I don't have to buy one," but a great many
finders are simply surprised, amused, and/or delighted at the idea,
and if the book they've found happens to be one they would love to add
to their personal library for the indefinite future, I don't see any
problem with that at all. [Heck, I don't even see a problem with the
folks who re-sell BC books; after all, it is another way for books to
travel!]
-GoryDetails
See the books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referral/GoryDetails
Have you told a friend today? http://bookcrossing.com/tellafriend
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