Meetup and other stuff

It’s been a busy few weeks. Work has been as ridiculous as always (actually, more so, thanks to idiots panicking unneccessarily about swine flu), and the rest of my time has flitted away in inconsequential ways in the way that time always does.

So, as usual, rather than any sort of real account of what I’ve been up to, here’s a bunch of random stuff:

Had a great meetup this morning. Not only did we have four regulars (me, lytteltonwitch, rarsberry, and undura), and three newbies, we also had a surprise visit from The-Organist, who’d driven up from Timaru for the day just so he could say goodbye to lytteltonwitch.

We ended up staying at the cafe until well after one – not bad for a supposed breakfast meetup!

The second-Tuesday meetup the week before last had good numbers too, actually, including a few newbies. Maybe this is a sign that the post-convention lethargy Christchurch Bookcrossing has been suffering is finally ending. I hope so, because we really need to get meetups revitalised again, especially with lytteltonwitch leaving us.

I’ve been doing quite well out of lytteltonwitch’s departure. Not only am I about to become the #1 bookcrosser in NZ 🙂 but she’s also needed to clear out all her books. And most of them have ended up at my place. I’m not going to be short of release fodder for a very long time!

Plus I’ve acquired a load of craft stuff (yeah, like I needed any more!), and useful baskets, and I’ve baggsed her bookshelves (well, I need somewhere to put all those books she brought over).

I should have friends leave the country more often… 🙂

With all these extra books in my release box(es), I’ve been getting back into some serious releasing. Especially around the university – the first couple of weeks of the semester are always a good time to release books, with a new crop of students full of curiosity and enthusiasm, and not yet so bogged down with studying that they can only read textbooks.

I’ve been having fun with themed releases, too, trying to match titles to departments. Like The Artist’s Widow and Renoir My Father in the School of Fine Arts, Orion Arm, Southern Cross and Evening Star and Gravity in the Physics and Astronomy building, Greek Fire in the Classics department, Point of Law, Pleading Guilty and Justice in the Law School, Bookends in the library, Company and Compassionate Capitalism in the Commerce building, The Value of X and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution in the Maths building, In the Forest of the Night and Time and the Forest in the Forestry building, a Japanese children’s book (ぞうのボタン) and recipe book in the Asian Languages department, The Unfortunate Experiment in the College of Science, Song of the Earth and North-West by South in the Geography department, Grace Notes in the Music building, Neither Angels nor Demons and A Little Love, a Little Learning in the College of Education, and The Sleep Instinct in a lecture theatre.

I’ve had some nice catches, too. Although ぞうのボタン was caught by someone who doesn’t read Japanese, they were still able to enjoy the pictures. Orion Arm was spotted several times by its finder before they actually picked it up. A Little Love, a Little Learning was caught before I even had a chance to make release notes. And Renoir My Father was picked up pretty quickly too.

And I’ve also had catches from Fatherhood by Bill Cosby, Johnny Cash: Winners Got Scars Too by Christopher S. Wren, The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson, From N to Z by CV Smith (which was then re-released and caught again!), Rivals by Janet Dailey, and one from Wellington: World, the Flesh and Myself by Michael Davidson.