#BookforaBook - Because Kindle share just isn't as old school

Once, before the age of social media, and instant messages, and texting, and all the other conveniences modern technology brought about, I received a chain letter in the mail. It was like pre-email spam, an actual physical letter that told me to pass it on to five other people on the bottom of the list, something that required a little effort, more than just picking the first 8 people that come up on your contacts, firing off the next link of email chain spam, and then hoping for 17 years of good luck and an unexpected phone call from your crush.

Oh come on...we've all gotten at least one of those in our early, hotmail.com email days.

I can't remember how successful my chain letter efforts were...which probably means they weren't very successful at all. I typically scorn such things when they come my way now. I'm not a habitual email forwarder...I've never been good at baking and passing on the friendship bread starters that have come my way...

However, when I happened to stumble upon this the other day:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/carina-sitkus/2014/12/bookforabook-check-it-out-here/

I was suckered back into the realm of internet chaining...mostly because it wasn't an internet chain!

In a world where my library account exists strictly for ebook borrowing on my Kindle (let's be honest though, this is mostly so that I can cross off the 'no library fines' item on my 30 before 30 list), there may have been something "romantic" about receiving an actual, albeit random, book to curl up with this winter. In hindsight, there may be nothing romantic at all about receiving a random book from a stranger. I'm not a full out germ-a-phobe...but what if the book comes from the apartment of an ebola patient? What if there are strange stains on the pages? What if the pages stick together? I'm not saying I'm really worried about these things...or that I even thought of them as I was signing up (they make for great internet paranoia though!). I'm just saying there's a nice element of the unknown here, and something that could make for a weird, yet hilarious, story.

What if the person sends me literary porn? It could happen! My new winter biking TV fad is Manhattan Love Story, a brilliant, witty little comedy that I'm relatively certain will only last a season but is fun while it lasts. In any case, in the latest episode the main female character, who's an assistant editor, just received her first solo book to work on. ...it's literary porn... It's funny... Until it's the random book that shows up at your house I suppose...

Should you so choose, you now have the link and can join me in this endeavor! If you're below me on the mailing list, I promise not to send you literary porn! I might even pass along something really worth reading. I have a great one going right now! Stay tuned for my thoughts on that, and on whatever it is that shows up in my mailbox weeks from now when I embark on this new literature adventure.

Happy Trails,