Yesterday I mailed off three bookmooch books to the UK. Ouch. Why is the cost of postage so insanely expensive? I've always opted to mail anywhere when it comes to bookmooch. And generally I don't mind mailing internationally (providing of course that the requests are spaced out a bit), as you have the added benefit of getting three points rather than one when you mail domestically. You can rack up the points amazingly fast that way. I am considering, however, switching to only mailing in the US at least temporarily during the holiday crunch time. I'll have to think about it. Whenever I think there is nothing left in my inventory that could be of much interest to anyone, along comes not one but three mooches!
The flip side, however....mooching from someone else. While I will mail internationally, I am greedy and usually only mooch from US members--I hold on to those points as long as I can. I told you I was greedy! I'm not sure that it is an even trade--mailing abroad and getting packages that were mailed here in the US, but it is pretty close. Now that I have a small excess of points I, of course, want to spend some of them. My recent finds have been Crow Lake by Mary Lawson thanks to this review and this review, and Maria Edgeworth's Belinda thanks to Dorothy's recommendations. Do you see how I seem to make a lot of my book selections these days? I'm still on the lookout for good books to mooch.
Since I was in the neighborhood I had to stop in at the library as well. I'm going into slight withdrawal from not checking out library books, so I thought perhaps a small fix was in order. Yes, another review caught my eye. Sally Gardner's I, Coriander is a book that I had come across before, wrote the title down and then promptly forgot about it. I took the direct route this time looked for a library copy. It is a YA novel set in 17th-century London.
"This atmospheric blend of historical fiction and original fairy tale spans 15 years in the life of Coriander, daughter of a London merchant and his fairy-princess wife. The protagonist relates the events of her life from early childhood to about age 17, a life shaped by both the politics of Oliver Cromwell's Puritan England and the oddly parallel politics of her mother's fairy kingdom."
It sounds good and I am looking forward to reading it. I also saw a recommendation for Janet McNaughton's To Dance at the Palais Royale, another YA novel. This is set circa 1928. A young woman leaves her native Scotland for Toronto to join her sister in domestic service. I have requested this one from the library, as my branch didn't have a copy on hand. I am also waiting for Diana Secker Tesdell's Christmas Stories. It is a collection of stories by various authors and published by Everyman's Library. Some of the authors included are Elizabeth Bowen, Willa Cather, Truman Capote, Chekhov, John Cheever and Richard Ford. It should be just the thing to dip into during December.
One more. A little browsing netted me The Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling. It sounds right up my alley:
"London, 1860: On the brink of destitution, Dora Damage illicitly takes over her ailing husband's bookbinding business, only to find herself lured into binding expensive volumes of pornography commissioned by aristocratic roués. Dora's charm and indefatigable spirit carry her through this rude awakening as she contends with violent debt collectors, an epileptic daughter, evil doctors, a rheumatic husband, errant workmen, nosy neighbors, and a constant stream of wealthy dilettantes. When she suddenly finds herself forced to offer an internship to a mysterious, fugitive American slave, Dora realizes she has been pulled into in an illegal trade of sex, money, and deceit."
Whenever I bring a new book home I always have to look it over--read all the blurbs, the first few paragraphs, and the author information. Sadly, author Belinda Starling passed away last year at the young age of 34. I'm not sure why I feel compelled to mention this, as I had decided to bring the book home with me prior to this knowledge, but it seems so unfortunate that the author may not have even seen her book come into publication. In any case, I've read reasonably good reviews of it and expect to find it enjoyable.