Stay Tuned This Week For: Write One Off My Life To Do List, or, A BookMooch Revisited

So I wouldn't normally blog about this here since it's not about science or books (at least directly) but in relation to recent events and regarding my previous post last month, I kind of felt the need for an update.

Last Tuesday I was online at the BookMooch discussion forums and John, the creator/founder dropped a notice that a reporter from the New York Times was writing an article about BookMooch and wanted to talk to a few members. Being the fan of the site that I am and that I kinda thought it would never go anywhere, I gave John my number to forward to her. And surprise, surprise, she called me about an hour later. We chatted about BookMooch for 15 minutes or so; about the mechanics of the site, what books were on my "wishlist" and what types of book I have given away. She didn't really seem to "get" it, but it was fun to be asked about my book habits and I left it at that.

Wednesday the ever lovely wife and I had the day off together and we decided to go Christmas shopping for our new place over in Frankenmuth; the "Little Bavaria" of Michigan and home to Bronner's, the largest Christmas store in the world. Anyway, while we were down there I got a call from the reporter again asking a couple more basic questions on the site and when she was finished she asked me if it would be okay to have my picture taken for the article. I thought to myself that with all the other people being interviewed along with John (the founder) that the odds of getting any pics in the paper were safely small and it might be pretty funny so I said "Sure!". Within 45 minutes I had the Times photo editor calling me setting up an appointment for the following evening at my home with a local free-lance photographer.

So Thursday night rolls around and after 4 hours of hard cleaning/organizing/throwing junk in the basement J and I finally have the library in presentable condition. A chatty photographer complete with a tweed jacket and fedora shows up at my place. After setting up his camera and lights and umbrella and other photo equipment he sets down to shooting me about 75 times in "different" poses. All of them sitting down with the laptop in my, well... lap and giving me suggestions like "Now! You've just noticed the most sought after book on your wishlist has just become available!" and "Reach for that Orwell like you are cataloging it to be given away" (as if I'd ever give George's complete works out!). It was quite strange to say the least. He kept talking and taking pictures until he thought I finally was relaxed and natural enough to get some good shots. After telling us about how Chicago is nothing more than Grand Rapids writ large and to get real culture you have to go to London or Tokyo he started packing up his bags and took off. Before he left he assured me the photos would appear on the Times website at the very least and probably in the paper too. I had my doubts. (P.S. - For legal reasons I have to state that the above picture was taken by Adam Bird and is property of the New York Times Company)

The weekend goes by without a word. I talked to some other people of the BookMooch forums and the consensus was that the reporter was less interested in understanding how the site works and the community that has grown up around it and more interested in finding some dirt and bad experiences to write about. Hey, but then, low and behold, Monday's edition hits the news stands and who's mug graces the 7th page of the business section? Yeah, it's mine! And to top it off, the article was not half bad either. She wrote some decent copy. She mentioned a couple of bad things, but these are realities of the site and she had to put some examples in there or it just would be a glorified advertisement.

So, very cool. I now have made the largest metropolitan newspaper in the country. I didn't know it was on my Life Time To-Do List last week but... it turns out it was. And now it's checked off. I'm very geeked about it and I will soon have a matted copy of the article hanging in our library.

The only problem now lies in the fact that the BookMooch servers are so slammed with new traffic that the site has been up and down and running excruciatingly slow the past 12 hours. But I know John will get it fixed sooner or later. He always does, so for now, instead of cruising for new books to mooch, maybe I'll just read for a while.

"People everywhere confuse what they read in the newspaper with news." -A.J. Liebling (1904-1963)