Some of you will know about BookCrossing, the website where you can ‘release your books into the wild’ for someone else to enjoy, where it is possible to register your book and track the journey it takes through its unique ID number. Via BookCrossing I gave away three Mary Stewarts on 9 May 2017, as a small act of commemoration (she died on 9 May 2014) and I wrote about it here. I only know the fate of one of those books: Thornyhold was found by someone who registered their find on BookCrossing with these words:
really like Mary Stewart, and this is as good as all her other books, thoroughly enjoyed it.
This makes me happy!
Now, regular readers of this blog may remember that I went to Avignon, Nimes and Marseille a year ago, as a wedding anniversary trip, and on this blog I shared photographs and wrote about where my footsteps retraced those of Charity in Mary Stewart’s Madam, Will You Talk?, beginning with this Avignon post. This year I am going to Poland for my anniversary – no Mary Stewart link there but I am going to leave Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree and Rose Cottage (plus Robert Macfarlane’s essay The Gifts of Reading) while I am there, in the hope of creating new Mary Stewart fans. Here are my books, registered on the BookCrossing website:
I have made labels to stick inside the books.
Tomorrow, I will leave these books at three different locations and write ‘release notes’ on the BookCrossing site. I hope that the finder of at least one of these books will register its journey on the website – and hopefully the readers will become lifelong Mary Stewart fans!
Have you given away or found books via BookCrossing? I’d love to know your story. Or have you given away books using The Book Fairies? I have given away books with them too – and wrote about it on my general book blog, The Three Rs Books, see here – and while I like their ethos too (and their fab badges and stickers etc) I think it’s a missed opportunity that they don’t offer an ID number so that a book’s progress can be tracked. That is why I have gone back to BookCrossing this time.
As always, I’d love to know your thoughts and comments.
Mary Queen of Plots 
Never heard of this form of book sharing – love it! Envious of your trip to Poland. My maiden name is Kuklinski and my paternal great grandparents were all born there, I visited my mother’s ancestral country last year at this time, but I will probably never get to Poland; so, I look forward to your photos and blog on your experience. I am a very enthusiastic, amateur genealogist.
Just received a copy of the Wind Off the Small Isles & Lost One combo with two chapters from This Rough Magic in the back, I read the Lost One first as someone here advised, am currently in the middle of This Rough Magic and will then reread Wind. I originally found that in its magazine form in the 70’s and kept it for a very long time. So glad to have a book form of it. I never would have known about Lost Ones if I didn’t follow this site. THANK YOU!!
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Thanks for the lovely comment! Where about in Poland is your family from? We were in Krakow several years ago and Katowice this time, both trips lovely.
So glad you are enjoying The Wind Off the Small Isles and The Lost One – I recommend Annabel’s The Sea Raven afterwards, I love her imagining of a part 3 story for Perdita.
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What a intriguing post! It’s great that you received the reply for one of the books and the person had a special reading experience. I’d be thrilled as well to find a book by a favorite author like Mary Stewart! I had never heard of BookCrossing before—I love the idea that there is the possibility of tracing the book’s journey. I also want to check out Robert Macfarlane’s “The Gifts of Reading” that you mention here. That’s a new title for me.
Have a wonderful time on your holiday in Poland!
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Thanks, Linda, we are having a great time and will fly home tonight. I like BookCrossing, it’s nice to imagine a book’s journey but it is even better to have the possibility that someone might log in to comment on the book or let you know where it is off to next! The Robert Macfarlane book is a short essay on the joy of reading with all profits going to Migrant Offshore Aid Station.
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I love the idea of new Polish Mary Stewart fans. Is there any particular reason why you chose those two books to take? Perhaps because they’re both set in the UK so they offer a snapshot of it to readers from another country?
I’d love to live in the England of The Ivy Tree, which has really nothing wrong with it that can’t be fixed by handling your (and other people’s) relatives decisively. (I wonder what Flora Poste would have made of the occupants of Whitescar!) Also, your new Polish readers might come away with the impression that everyone in England smokes like a chimney.
Annabel
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Hi Annabel, I’d love to claim such clever thinking but it was more a case of grabbing handy books… and I love your idea of an Ivy Tree / Cold Comfort Farm mash-up!
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