Paperback Swap

Growing up I was not much of a reader. There really weren't any books in our house. Although, I do have early memories of Richard Scary's books. Searching for the little mouse was what I recall... Later, I would be more inclined to read the cliff notes or watch the movie than read the assigned book for English class. My poor high school English teacher. Oh boy, did I tormented her!
Fifteen years later I do enjoy a good read. I am not much for stretching out in the middle of the day to read, but if we are on vacation, and each night before I go to sleep, I read.
I am not a fast reader. I FINALLY finished Atlas Shrugged after nearly three years. Granted I took about a five month break after the first 150 pages or so and it is a BIG book, but still... I finished. I have begun to tackle Sun Tzu's Art of War. I thought Atlas was heady! HA! In between, and definitely on trips, I enjoy more frivilous books. Two of my favorite authors are Nelson Demille and Clive Cussler. I just love Dirk Pitt. Dennis Lehane's early books were pretty good, too. My favorite book of all time is A Prayer for Owen Meany. I must have read it fifty times. The pages are separating from the binding and the cover is long gone, but I just love it!
Hubby has an even bigger love of books. He can devour a book in a week. He'd read two or more if he were able to take the time!
So we frequent the used book sections, and used book stores for updated reads. Airport bookstores are a frequent purchase point. This is a little pricey so we have been working on alternatives!
We tried to swap books among the family, but we have not been as consistent as we like. So, I was thrilled when I stumbled upon Harvest Lane's blog with the Paperback Swap! I signed up immediately and quickly found books to post that have been relinquished to the back of the bookshelf.
If you think this might be for you please visit http://www.paperbackswap.com/ to sign up. No cost! Yay! My e-mail addy is sk07nh@yahoo.com for the referral if you would please :)
Happy Reading!

Naive

We get a large number of solicitations for donations throughout the year. Usually from the sheriffs dept, or cancer society, or United Way, but we also get the local schools, and when our employees kids have fund raisers we seem a worthy target. We have our donations all set up, and I don't usually give to any random cause that walks through the door, but I will at least listen to the proposal, and/or look at the package they have put together. A donation request this week stopped me in my tracks with it's astounding lack of foresight. The wife of one of our guys works at a private school in town, and they are doing a fund raiser promoting environmental awareness and going green. Sounds like a worthy cause, right? Being in alternative energy we'd be a good candidate? Sure. Sounds like a win, win situation? Absolutely! Then he told me what they were doing with their Go Green theme. They are taking donations to put the donating company's logo on water bottles that they will sell, and/or give out at whatever little concerts or get together's their school has. PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES. To promote being green! At first I thought he was kidding. I asked him to clarify. Yup,he was talking about the individual plastic water bottles, like Evian, or Poland Springs. When the snicker snuck out of my mouth, he gave me a puzzled look and boldly pushed forward boasting about how MANY water bottles they were going to get, and wouldn't that be a great promotion to have our name on and very worthwhile for our company? I asked how they were going to encourage recycling them and got a deer in the headlights stare... HELLO? McFly! Anybody home?!?
These bottles are made of PET plastic derived from petroleum. (The point/focus of our business is to get people off of petroleum!) In the US (alone) we use over 30 billion of those bottles a year, or ~30 million a day! One billion bottles could make 72 million square meters of carpet for an idea of scale. According to the American Recycling Institute only 14% of those 30 billion are recycled. The rest go right into the landfills. That's well over 25 billion bottles used once (maybe-MAYBE twice) and tossed. Why not teach the kids NOT to use those little environmental bombs? Or design a pamphlet on why they should A- not use them and give some alternatives like the SIGG bottles and B- Why they should recycle if they have to use them occasionally, and where... I would pay a lot more money for that!
I will admit that I have purchased them on occasion, and do not always recycle them, but I do try to use them as many times as I can. Most importantly, I am not using one of our most needless environment clogging, and wastefully consumptive items to promote being green! To me that is like having a fire "safety" meeting giving out matches and hay then showing people how to easily start a fire. It really doesn't take a lot of common sense. How do you politely say that someone's 'go green' promotion is fatally flawed?